Jul 12, 2026
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Leiden’s Treasured Artistic Soul
Discover where Rembrandt’s genius, pilgrimage history, and tulip heritage converge along enchanting canal-lined streets.
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Love Netherlands
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Dear Netherlands,
There are two kinds of mornings in the Dutch spring. The kind where you cycle to the market and come home with warm cheese and rye bread and a handful of wild tulips. And the kind where it rains sideways for an hour, then the sun comes out and everything looks like a Vermeer. Today, if you’re lucky, is one of those mornings.
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W. Bulach via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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In today’s email:
- Leiden: Where Rembrandt, Pilgrims and the First Dutch Tulips Share the Same City
- At The Café — Café Hoppe — The Brown Café at the Centre of Amsterdam
- Around The Web — Texel Island Netherlands: The Complete Visitor’s Guide, Tracing Your Family in Zeeland: A Heritage Travel Plan, The Dutch Words That Don’t Translate — and What They Tell You About the Netherlands + more
- From Love Netherlands — Tracing Your Family in North Holland: A Heritage Travel Plan
- Dutch Food You Will Love — Boerenkaas — The Farmhouse Cheese With a Protected Name
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Leiden: Where Rembrandt, Pilgrims and the First Dutch Tulips Share the Same City
👉 Read the full story
Leiden: Where Rembrandt, Pilgrims and the First Dutch Tulips Share the Same City A city of canals, scholars and centuries of stories, Leiden is one of the most richly layered places you can explore in the Netherlands An introduction to Leiden Standing at the confluence of the Old Rhine and the New Rhine, Leiden has been doing remarkable things for a very long time. It is a city that gave Rembrandt van Rijn to the world, sheltered the Pilgrim Fathers before they sailed for America, introduced the tulip to the Netherlands, and founded the country’s oldest university on the back of a legendary Spanish siege. For a place with fewer than 125,000 inhabitants, its contribution to history is almost absurdly outsized — and yet the city itself remains unhurried, beautifully preserved, and entirely unpretentious about all of it. The compact centre folds neatly around a web of canals, brick bridges…
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Have you been there? Do you have a memory of this corner of the Netherlands? Hit reply and tell us — we’d love to hear your story.
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At The Café
Café Hoppe — The Brown Café at the Centre of Amsterdam
Café Hoppe on the Spui has been pouring beer since 1670 — long enough that the wooden floor has sunk slightly at the door from three and a half centuries of footfall. It’s the kind of place where the bartender knows the regulars’ orders, the tourists get treated exactly the same as the locals, and the bitterballen come out exactly hot enough to burn the roof of your mouth if you don’t wait. It sits right in the middle of the city, a few minutes’ walk from the Dam, and it’s one of the last genuinely authentic brown cafés you can still find without trying. Come in the late afternoon, sit outside on the pavement, and order a beer.
👉 Visit the café
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Around The Web
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From Love Netherlands
Your opa left a village north of Amsterdam. Your grandmother kept a photograph of a harbour town with wooden fishing boats. Somewhere in North Holland, your family’s Dutch story began. North Holland is the heart of Dutch history. It is home to Amsterdam, Haarlem, Alkmaar, and the old Zuiderzee ports of Hoorn and Enkhuizen. For those with Dutch roots, this province holds some of the richest genealogical records in the country. The Amsterdam City…
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Photo via Love Netherlands
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Dutch Food You Will Love
Boerenkaas — The Farmhouse Cheese With a Protected Name
Boerenkaas is the protected designation for cheese made on a Dutch farm with raw milk from that farm’s own cows, by the farmer themselves, with no industrial shortcuts. It tastes nothing like the supermarket Gouda. Younger wheels are creamy and sweet; aged ones develop deep crystalline cracks and a flavour that lingers for minutes. Every Friday, in Alkmaar’s old Waagplein cheese market, you’ll see boerenkaas being weighed on antique scales — a pageant for tourists and a real trade for cheesemakers. Pair it with apple, walnut and a glass of jenever.
👉 Read the full story
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