A picnic doesn't have to mean a bland patch of grass. A new roundup of the world's most unusual picnic spots turns the humble outdoor lunch into something far stranger — you can eat inside a salt mine, beside a ruined castle, or under the final approach path of passenger jets.
Some of the picks trade scenery for atmosphere. In Griffith Park, Los Angeles, the city's first zoo closed back in the 1960s, but its empty monkey cages and bear grotto now double as a picnic area with tables and grills. In Tuzluca, Turkey, a working salt cave that has supplied the region since medieval times recently opened to the public — visitors walk a boardwalk through warm-lit caverns and settle at picnic tables set along the chamber walls.
History buffs get plenty of options too. Old Wardour Castle in Tisbury, England, was wrecked in a 1642 siege and later restored as a visitor attraction; today you can climb the tower for countryside views, then spread lunch in the same courtyard English barons once used. Tunisia's Ras Angela, on the Mediterranean coast, is billed as the northernmost point of Africa — marked by a flag and a continent-shaped sculpture, with a swimmable beach right next door.
A surprising number of these spots are industrial sites nature has reclaimed. Liberia's Bomi Blue Lake formed when abandoned pit mines filled with clear spring water in the late 1970s; swimmers now use it and picnic under wooden pavilions. Australia's Woolshed Falls in Beechworth sits at the heart of a 19th-century gold-mining operation — its plunge pool is unusually deep because so much gold was dredged from the riverbed. In Mexico, the ruins of La Planta, a former water-powered power plant above San Agustín Etla, draw hikers with mountain views and a posted poem about not being able to eat money.
Others are pure whimsy or spectacle. Christy Buchanan's SHE Garden & Gallery in Winnsboro, South Carolina, is an ever-changing folk-art garden with a Love Shack and bicycle arch — drop by whether the artist is home or not. Gravelly Point Park in Arlington, Virginia, sits so close to Washington National Airport that planes roar directly overhead on landing, which is precisely the appeal. And in Abu Dhabi, the Al Wathba Fossil Dunes offer wind-carved mineral formations best enjoyed at dawn — with a firm rule never to climb them.
There are gentler options too: a picnic beneath the carved tiger heads of Tiger Cave in Mahabalipuram, India; a valley lunch by Sardinia's 'dripping' waterfall Sa Stiddiosa; the overgrown Sports City complex in Amman, one of the few green spaces in the city; and even a velodrome in East Point, Georgia, where you can watch cyclists hit 40mph on 36-degree banked turns between sandwiches.
If your usual picnic routine has gone stale, these places prove a packed lunch can come with folklore, ruins, gold-mining history or a jet screaming overhead — the blanket is optional.