A few years ago, Blijdorp opened an enormous aquarium, the Oceanium. Here, you can find lots of fish, sharks and even penguins in several tanks. According to today's standards, you can walk through one of those tanks in a tunnel.

We were here with the other members of our photo club. Our assignment was 'natural patterns'. We were supposed to make pictures of zebra-skin, and so on. But when you are close to a lion, it is tempting to make just a picture of the complete lion instead of a picture of his hair.

But we can recommend it: take a telephoto lens or binoculars with you, you see a lot more. For instance, we took this mother and child picture from a distance of about 25 meters.

At those distances, you also need a tripod if you want your pictures to be sharp.

At first sight we didn't realise what was missing about this rhino. After a while we noticed he doesn't have a horn. The hippo is a paper basket, roaring when you put your garbage in his mouth. We couldn't find the real hippos, so we don't know if they also roar when you put garbage in their mouth.

Most animals live in spacious areas, but not so large that you can't see the animals. That must be a big problem for zoos: keeping the animals happy, as well as the visitors . We think Blijdorp succeeds here.