This weekend we visited the China Light Festival in Ouwehands Dierenpark in Rhenen, Netherlands. It had been on our calenders for quite a while now, but with Christmas and my birthday and Disneyland, we hadn’t had the time to visit until now. I’m glad we still went, because it was amazing!

Ouwehands Dierenpark is a zoo in the Netherlands that’s about half an hour drive from our home. We decided to get combi tickets, so we could spend the day in the zoo, have dinner there and then see the lights when the sun had set.

We saw our favourite animals; penguins, polar bears and lions, spent quite some time staring at the bats. The biggest hit of this zoo, however, are the panda bears, so we paid them a visit as well.

I always love visiting zoos, and this one is great, for the animals have a lot of space to walk around in and private areas where they can choose to be away from visitors. But the highlight of this day was going to be the light festival, so we decided to have dinner at tha Pandasia restaurant (which has really good noodles) while waiting for the sun to set, so we could walk the Light Festival Route in the dark.

It started at five pm but we decided to wait until it was dark. We had seen the statues all over the zoo already, but it really was something else when everything lit up in the dark.

There were about 30 light statues, some of birds or Dutch scenery, others represented some of the animals you could find in the zoo, such as panda’s, bears and lions.

I’ve never seen anything like this. All of the light statues were detailed and beautiful. Some of the animals had actual fur and moving tails.

We had a magical night. Everything was gorgeous and it felt like walking around in a lit up fairytale.

I’d really recommend visiting this festival, if you happen to be in the Netherlands. You can visit the China Light Festival until the end of february. See the website for exact dates and tickets.