New London – Cindy Manzi of Springfield, Mass., has been coming to Ocean Beach Park consistently for the past five summers. She came down just about every weekend last year.

“I just love it down here, the smell. I guess you can’t call it quiet, but there’s a certain peace to it,” she said as she sat on a beach towel in the wind and sun Sunday, reading a book.

A few spots down on the sand, Angel Rivera of Hamden sat with a thick smear of sunscreen on his face as his children and their friends scurried to the shore and back with buckets and kites and sandy feet.

His 9-year-old son Diego said he’d enjoyed a day of “doing Frisbee” and eating lunch on the beach.

“We’re playing and putting water on our heads, having fun,” he said, standing next to a wet-faced John Diamond, age 8, who was holding a green bucket filled with sand and sea water.

Ocean Beach General Manager Dave Sugrue estimated 4,000 people were sunning themselves, eating ice cream and dipping their toes in the water down along New London’s iconic boardwalk.

The beach opened Saturday to cool weather. Sunday was still a little windy, but Sugrue said that people are looking to get outside nonetheless.

Misquamicut Beach in Westerly saw a similar bump in traffic Sunday as weather warmed, according to Misquamicut Business Association Executive Director Caswell Cooke.

Cooke, speaking over the phone from his seasonal restaurant Seafood Haven, said parking lots were filled with cars from New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

“It’s a windy day but it hasn’t dampened the spirits of anybody coming out and the sun is shining and there’s just a lot of people,” he said.

He noted that parts of the three-mile stretch of beach locations opened last month. He described this Memorial Day weekend as the first busy weekend he’d seen this season, but said the level of traffic was nothing out of the ordinary.

Waterford Beach provided a quieter, more tranquil setting. The town was not yet charging visitors and the beach’s tall white lifeguard benches were conspicuously absent.

Jenelle Fiano, of Waterford, reclined in a beach chair looking at her phone. She said town residents had a few more weeks before out-of-towners started to flood the beach’s white sand shores.

On this Sunday, she was enjoying a few kid-free hours of relaxation with her mother-in-law, Linda Fiano of New London.

“No such thing as a bad day at the beach,” said Linda.

Four Navy sailors fresh from boot camp were drinking beer nearby, chatting over the low thump of music from a small portable speaker. They said it was nice to sit and watch the boats go by, even if the water was a little too cold for swimming.

Allen Nichols, of Charleston, S.C., said he was the only one among his friends to submerge his body in the still-chilly waters of Long Island Sound. He explained that he had lost a bet.

His friend Odaine Earle, of Queens, N.Y., only got as far as dipping his toes.

“I almost caught pneumonia getting in there,” he said.

t.townsend@theday.com

Twitter: @ConnecticuTess