Aug 04, 2026
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Veluwe’s Wild Art Escape
Pedal through Van Gogh’s muse, spot rare wildlife, and ride free bicycles across the Netherlands’ greatest nature reserve.
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Love Netherlands
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Dear Netherlands,
Every Dutch village has a bell tower, a market square, a brown café, and a bakery older than the country it sits in. The magic of the Netherlands isn’t Amsterdam. It’s the 400 other places that don’t need to try. Places like Thorn, where every house is painted white. Places like Giethoorn, where nobody has ever driven to the shop.
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Photo: Shutterstock
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In today’s email:
- De Hoge Veluwe National Park: The Complete Visitor’s Guide (2026)
- At The Café — Café De Druif — A Sailors’ Bar With a Pirate’s Story
- Around The Web — Rotterdam Food Guide: Where to Eat, Drink and Explore the Market Scene (2026), Tracing Your Family in Drenthe: A Heritage Travel Plan, Tracing Your Family in Utrecht: A Heritage Travel Plan + more
- From Love Netherlands — The Achterhoek
- Dutch Food You Will Love — Bitterballen — The Small, Dangerous Joy of the Dutch Evening
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De Hoge Veluwe National Park: The Complete Visitor’s Guide (2026)
👉 Read the full story
De Hoge Veluwe National Park is the largest national park in the Netherlands, and it rewards every visitor who makes the trip. Set in the heart of Gelderland, this 5,500-hectare landscape of pine forests, shifting sand dunes and purple heathland is unlike anything else in the country. It also holds one of Europe’s great art secrets: the Kröller-Müller Museum, home to the world’s second-largest collection of Van Gogh paintings. Add a fleet of free white bicycles and you have a day out that stays with you long after you return to Amsterdam. Love the Netherlands? Join our free newsletter for hidden Dutch gems → inlovewithnetherlands.com/subscribe What Makes De Hoge Veluwe National Park Special? The Netherlands is flat, tidy and densely populated. De Hoge Veluwe is none of those things. Ridges of glacial moraine push the landscape into gentle hills. Open heathland stretches to every horizon…
👉 Read the full story
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 De Druif — A Sailors’ Bar With a Pirate’s Story
Café De Druif on the Rapenburgerplein is a small brown café in Amsterdam’s old Eastern Docklands neighbourhood, founded in 1631. It once served sailors heading out from the East India Company quays, and the worn wooden bar has barely changed. Folklore says Piet Hein — the Dutch admiral who captured the Spanish silver fleet — drank here. The place is small, the regulars are friendly, and on a quiet weekday afternoon you can sit alone with a borrel of jenever and feel four centuries of Amsterdam waterfront history settle around you.
👉 Visit the café
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Around The Web
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From Love Netherlands
The Achterhoek In the quiet eastern corner of Gelderland, a landscape of moated castles, book-filled market squares and ancient hedgerow country has been waiting patiently for you to arrive. An introduction to The Achterhoek There is a particular quality of quiet in the Achterhoek that takes a little time to recognise for what it is. Not emptiness — the fields and lanes are full of life — but depth. The eastern edge of Gelderland sits in a fold…
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Kasteel Twickel via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 nl)
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Dutch Food You Will Love
Bitterballen — The Small, Dangerous Joy of the Dutch Evening
A bitterbal is a small, crumb-coated sphere of slow-cooked beef ragout, deep-fried until crisp and served burning hot with a dish of sharp Dutch mustard. Walk into any brown café on a weekday evening and you’ll see them on half the tables. The rules are: wait two minutes so you don’t burn your mouth, bite off the top to let the steam escape, dip in mustard, eat in two bites, and order another round. Their name has nothing to do with being bitter — it’s from the old Dutch word bittertje, an aperitif served at pre-dinner hour. The name stuck long after jenever stopped being the drink of choice.
👉 Read the full story
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