  We give an overview of the experiments at the Laser Centre of the Vrije
Universiteit in Amsterdam on ultracold gases of metastable helium-4 and
helium-3 as well as mixtures of both isotopes. We describe our experimental
setup and discuss our experiments on Bose-Einstein condensation of 4He* (more
than 10 million atoms in a BEC) and sympathetic cooling of 3He* towards Fermi
degeneracy (more than 1 million atoms below the Fermi temperature as well as
realization of a degenerate boson-fermion mixture). We also present our results
on Penning Ionization in ~1 mK clouds containing a single isotope (homonuclear
losses) or a mixture of both isotopes (heteronuclear losses).
