France's picnickers are about to be swamped by harsh reality, no matter who is president.

ECONOMIST: France's future

The picnickers nearest to the statue itself, for instance, speak mostly Ilocano, a dialect from northern Luzon.

ECONOMIST: Out of misery, some extraordinary lessons

But lest people get carried away with visions of smiling picnickers in the new green arcadias of Blairite Britain, the urban parks scheme come with a very nineties twist.

ECONOMIST: City planning

Francis, patron saint of the environmental movement, we tried repeatedly to find a route up Monte Subasio that avoided the trash of picnickers or the roar of traffic from the motorway below, to no avail.

WSJ: James Lasdun on the Dark Side of Writing Travel Books | Traveler's Tale

Sitting now on lawns, amid well-tended flowerbeds and chattering picnickers, it is hard to imagine the British Army swarming onto this plain to attack the French, the smoke of gunfire forming a thick haze among the trees, the slashing of bayonets, and the screaming of the wounded.

BBC: Qu��bec's wood runners

For a hipper setting, wander along the bobo (bourgeois bohemian) paradise of the Canal St Martin, a shop- and cafe-lined canal in the trendy 10th arrondissement, which packs out with picnickers and revellers as soon as the sun shines (and well into the night, too).

BBC: The great outdoors in urban Paris