When you have vouchers to go to places for free, you sometimes decide to splash out and book a hotel. Like we did last weekend. As members of Aquazoo, we had tickets to both Avifauna and Archeon, which are both in Alphen aan de Rijn. Too far to drive to separately, and both fun enough to decide to make a nice weekend out of it. As we were all still a bit sniffly, we decided not to go camping, but treat ourselves to a hotel, with swimming pool and four comfy beds.
The view from our room, with terrace. Lots of planes! Luckily, they didn’t keep us up at night.
We left on Friday, and drove straight to Avifauna, a zoo with just birds. Despite it sounding boring, it was quite exciting. We had massive eagles, colourful aras, bulky pelikans and dainty hummingbirds. We also enjoyed the bird show. It was quite spectacular to see a sea eagle land on a fence just behind you ![]()
The pelicans in their massive pond.
While there, we also realized why there was a Van der Valk hotel on site. They own the place! Of course… That also explains the toucan bird, although there are no toucans in the park, only hornbills. Look similar, different continent. See, we learnt a lot at Avifauna!
There was also a great playground, with a massive slide (well, actually, a MASSIVE slide), which kept us busy until well into the afternoon, until it was time to go hunt for some dinner and retire to the hotel for a few laps in the pool.
The next morning, we were up nice and early, and after breakfast at the lokal baker’s, we set off for Archeon. This blew our minds away. It was so cool! We went this weekend especially because it was Fashion Weekend, and they did put on a special fashion show, there were spinners (from Amy’s crowd) and lots of other fashion and textile/yarn was on show. No need to say that a certain girl was in her element.
Posing with a neolithic beauty.
We started in the Prehistoric period, where Hannah and Sam got ‘natural’ tattoos and got to dress up in leather outfits.
The weather was great, so we really got the Prehistoric barefoot thing!
There were several farms, ranging from very long ago to a bit less long ago, all as original as possible. This one just looked amazing, with the comfy benches, sheep skins and the weaving loom and basket full of yarn outside.

After a quick scoot through the maze, we went on to Roman times, where Hannah got her hair done Roman style…


The kids got to try making some mosaic letters (Sam still with his Prehistoric face paint)


We watched a Nehalennia ritual, the Germanic/Roman goddess of sea trade and fertility… 
And last but not leist, the gladiators!


The Middle Ages were also great fun! There were lots of games for the kids, such as these fake horses for jousting.


And of course, we had to pose with another loom…

We could have stayed a few more hours, but unfortunately, even fun days come to an end… Hannah and Amy are considering spending the night here next year, in Medieval costumes, of course!
Now, back to work… with computers, TV and stuff…
















































































































