Festyland!

bumperboats!

Caen (week 2)

rope bridge

Yes, there is a theme park called "Festyland".  It is roughly equivalent to Upper Clements Park, except with more rides and fewer specialty shops (for example, it has 2 rollercoasters!).  There are rides for a wide variety of age groups, so there were kids there from 2 to 20 years old.  After a week of dragging the boys all over the D-Day beaches, we thought it would be a nice break to go to a theme park.

Neither of the boys wanted to risk the rollercoasters, but we still managed to spend over 5 hours there, with David especially taking multiple rides on each of his favorites.  It's a one-price-covers-everything park, so the number of rides is limited only by the length of the lineups and the strength of your stomach.  Even though the day was sunny and warm (30C), there was never more than a 10-minute wait for any of the rides.

Memorial site (flag is for the North NS Highlanders regiment)

After having thought they'd escaped history for a day, we dropped by the Abbaye Ardenne, which was the site of the killing of 20 Canadian PoWs by a Hitler Youth SS regiment.  The German commander was convicted of a war crime after the war.  The Abbey grounds were also open - it was the command centre for the 12th SS Panzer Division, so it was fought over and much of it had to be rebuilt.  They left one ruined building as a reminder.