Aug 25, 2026
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Cycling the Netherlands Guide
Master Dutch bike culture with insider tips on routes, rentals, and rules.
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Love Netherlands
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Dear Netherlands,
Somewhere in the Netherlands right now, someone is pouring a pint of something dark — perfectly. Somewhere, a tulip field is waiting to bloom. Somewhere, a baker is sliding the first tray of stroopwafels onto the counter while the smell fills the whole street. The Dutch don’t make a fuss. They just make things the way their parents and their parents’ parents made them.
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Photo: Shutterstock
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In today’s email:
- Cycling in the Netherlands: A Complete Visitor’s Guide (2026)
- At The Café — Café De Druif — A Sailors’ Bar With a Pirate’s Story
- Around The Web — Tracing Your North Holland Heritage: Archives, Records and Ancestral Towns, Maastricht, Netherlands: The Complete Visitor’s Guide (2026), Best Time to Visit the Netherlands: A Month-by-Month Guide (2026) + more
- From Love Netherlands — Edam Day Trip from Amsterdam: Cheese, Canals and Genuine Dutch Charm
- Dutch Food You Will Love — Bitterballen — The Small, Dangerous Joy of the Dutch Evening
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Cycling in the Netherlands: A Complete Visitor’s Guide (2026)
👉 Read the full story
The Dutch invented cycling as a way of life. With more bicycles than people — roughly 23 million bikes for 17 million residents — the Netherlands treats the bicycle not as a leisure item but as a primary mode of transport. When you cycle here, you enter a country that has spent decades engineering its roads, paths, and cities around the rider. For visitors, that means smooth fietspad (cycle paths) stretching across every province, clear signage, and a culture that actively makes space for you on two wheels. Love the Netherlands? Join our free newsletter for hidden Dutch gems → inlovewithnetherlands.com/subscribe This guide covers everything a visitor needs to know before setting off: where to hire a bike, the rules of the road (and path), the best cycling routes by region, and how to plan a multi-day cycling trip through the Dutch countryside. Why Cycling in the Netherlands Is Unlike…
👉 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 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
Love the Netherlands? Join our free newsletter for hidden Dutch gems → inlovewithnetherlands.com/subscribe Edam is just 30 minutes north of Amsterdam. Most people know the name from the round red-wax cheese sold in supermarkets worldwide. But very few visitors ever find the actual town. That is your advantage. The town sits quietly beside its own canals and drawbridges. While nearby Volendam draws hundreds of thousands of tourists each year,…
👉 Read the full story
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Photo via Love Netherlands
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Dutch Food You Will Love
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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