Agon-Coutainville

We finished up our second day by meeting Gaudeline, Dylane, and the kids at Agon-Coutainville. Agon-Coutainville is a seaside resort town, with a lovely line of houses along the beach, and delicious ice cream!

Tourism in the times of covid

So we're glad we got to travel, even if it's only within France right now. But this is what tourism looks like in the times of covid. Masks required inside most museums.

Me and Noah outside the Batteries de Crisbecq museum entrance

Benjamin, Noah, me, and Frédéric outside the Dead Man's Corner Museum

Normandy: D-Day Experience museum and American Cemetery

On our second day, we went to the D-Day Experience museum in Carentan. On top of a typical World War II museum experience, the museum also offers a C47 simulator and 3D movies.

Then we visited the American cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer.

Normandy: Utah Beach and Sainte-Mère-Eglise

On our long, long touring day (according to the niece and nephew who went with us), we drove to Utah Beach next. We stopped at this memorial and went down to the beach.

Utah Beach itself (the part with the museum) turned out to be chock-full of people, so we opted out and went to show the kids the paratrooper on the bell tower at Sainte-Mère-Eglise.

Someone was visiting in Willys Jeeps.

Benjamin

Les Batteries de Crisbecq

A friend suggested we visit the Batteries de Crisbecq, a series of German bunkers you can visit not too far from Utah Beach. So we went there after La Pointe du Hoc.

Normandy: La Pointe du Hoc

After a picnic lunch at a boule yard with a picnic table, we went to La Pointe du Hoc.

The site has changed a lot since we were last there in 2003. Now it has parking lots and bathrooms, which are a nice improvement.

It also has paths to walk on, with the rest of the grounds cordoned off. We're not sure if that's an "improvement" that happened at some point in the intervening years, or whether it was to keep people from damaging the site, or both, but it changes the entire visit. When we went in 2003, you could go down into the craters - not anymore.

Benjamin, Frédéric, and Noah

Me and Benjamin

Normandy: Omaha Beach

We hadn't been to Normandy in the summer as a family since - well, ever. The last time we went to Normandy as a family was for Christmas 2017, and before that we went for Gaudeline and Dylane's wedding in 2015, but the boys were at camp. Frédéric and Noah went to visit a house one time, but Benjamin was sick that weekend, so he and I stayed home.Before that, Frédéric and I had last visited the area with my family in 2003.

So the pandemic limiting our travel options this summer gave us the opportunity to take the boys to visit some of the important sites in Normandy while visiting Frédéric's mom, sister, brother-in-law, and niece and nephew there.

We took Anita, Kyllian, and Kalïah with us on the first day out, and started with a visit of the outside of the Overlord Museum in Colleville-sur-Mer.

From there, we went to Omaha Beach.

"Les Braves"

Anita and Frédéric

Noah and Benjamin

Tying Children to the Swimming Pool

So, we got a pool, since we decided one way or another, we'd be home a lot more this summer than usual. But the boys are swimmers, and you can't really swim laps in a 15-foot pool. We'd seen another solution online, and decided to try it - the swim trainer elastic. This version attaches to two corners of the pool and has a belt that goes around the swimmer's waist, providing resistance and allowing the swimmer to do strokes but not move forward in the pool.

It works great!

Noah testing out the swim elastic

Benjamin testing out the swim elastic

It even works for backstroke, Benjamin's best stroke

Benjamin and Noah