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Bon appetit: Paris's Champs-Elysees to host giant picnic | Philstar.com
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Food and Leisure

Bon appetit: Paris's Champs-Elysees to host giant picnic

Agence France-Presse - Agence France-Presse
Bon appetit: Paris's Champs-Elysees to host giant picnic
A Peniche boat sails past the Eiffel Tower on the River Seine on July 17, 2023, during a parade to test "maneuvers," "distances," "duration" and "video capture" of the future opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics in 2024. For this mini-rehearsal, the total fleet is made up of 57 boats, 39 representing the delegations – slightly less than half as many as for D-Day in 2024 – and 18 others providing support (assistance, first aid) as well as Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), the Olympic TV broadcaster.
AFP / Bertrand Guay

PARIS, France — Paris's most famous street the Champs-Elysees is to host a giant open-air picnic as the French capital's iconic boulevard seeks to reinvent itself.

Nearly 273,000 people have applied to take part in the event which will see a 216-meter-long red-and-white checkered rug cover the picnic ground and feature free packed meals from organizers' eight partner restaurants.

Around 4,000 people have been selected to participate in the "le grand pique-nique," with each guest invited to bring up to six additional people and choose one of two sittings, at noon or 2:00 pm.

The "world's largest tablecloth," made from 25 pieces of recycled fiber, will be assembled on site by 150 people, the organizers said.

The aim of the event was to show that the Champs-Elysees, famous for its expensive boutiques and restaurants, was not only good for shopping, said Marc-Antoine Jamet, president of the organizer, the Champs-Elysees Committee.

Related: 'Too few women': Michelin unveils 62 newly starred French restaurants

"It's a way of telling Parisians: 'Come back to the Champs-Elysees'", he said.

In 2023, the association transformed the avenue into an open-air mass "dictation" spellathon, pitting thousands of France's brainiest bookworms against one another.

With 1,779 desks laid out on the boulevard, organizers had sought to break the world record for a dictation spelling competition.

A top tourist attraction, the avenue has been gradually abandoned by locals in recent years.

The historic UGC Normandie cinema, which opened in 1937, is set to close in June due to decline in business.

On Monday, the Committee was due to present a 1,800-page study of possible ways to reinvent the Champs-Elysees.

RELATED: Uniqlo opens new café in SM Mall of Asia

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