Festy Land

We have been on hoilday in Normany a number of times now. We like the sand, wind, towns, food and the scenery. Cheese, wine and religious go down well...

One place we're not so keen on is Caen - or rather - the Caen Périphérique, which is not a fun road to get lost on...

On the other hand, we keep passing this place called Festyland - a real local French theme park. This year, however, we decided to stop in and have a look...

We had a fun time. It was like Gulivor's Land in France, but in a funny kind of way, it was one of the more French experiences of our holiday. Real people doing their own thing.

The kids had great fun on the rides which were mostly themed on vikings, Normans and pirates. I enjoyed a couple of goes of bumper boats and we sheltered from the rain in a 3D cinema watching fish in the Atlantic...

The highlight of the visit was undoubtedly "Thor" Le Cinema Sensitif - which turned out to be a multi-sensory "experience" based on Thor and Vikings. The show consisted of two electric fans, some water sprays, a paddling pool and a screen. We were treated to five minutes of wave pictures while the noisy fans blew spray water at us. There was then a battle scene between women in swim-suits and hairy Viking students. This was followed by a brief piece of cgi showing the expansion of the Vikings before concluding with another five minutes of windy water spray and wave pictures - all with a deep French voice-over... Classic! We were tempted to re-create the whole thing with a video camera, a water spray and a hair drier.

All in all, a good day out and a must-see trip if you're anywhere near Caen. Good luck finding it from the Périphérique with a Sat Nav though - we ended up on the wrong side of the motorway somewhere near the back fence...