May 19, 2026

North Brabant, Netherlands: A Complete Travel Guide to the Forgotten Dutch Province

from medieval Den Bosch to design Eindhoven and castle city Breda. Your guide to the forgotten Dutch province.

Love Netherlands

Dear Netherlands,

It’s easy to miss the thing that makes the Netherlands special. It isn’t the windmills or the tulips or the canals, though all of those are real and beautiful. It’s a particular kind of attention — the way a Dutch baker arranges the croissants, the way a Dutch cycle lane goes exactly where you need it, the way a brown café has the same four regulars in the same four seats for forty years. Pay attention to that, and you’ll start to love the Netherlands in a way most visitors never do.

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In today’s email:

• North Brabant, Netherlands: A Complete Travel Guide to the Forgotten Dutch Province
• At The Café — Café Papeneiland — The Café on the Corner Bill Clinton Loved
• Around The Web — Leiden Travel Guide, Delft — A Day in the Town That Made Vermeer, Groningen Travel Guide + more
• From Love Netherlands — The Wadden Islands — Choosing Your Island
• Dutch Food You Will Love — Kroket — The Older, Stranger Cousin of Bitterballen

North Brabant, Netherlands: A Complete Travel Guide to the Forgotten Dutch Province

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North Brabant sits quietly in the south of the Netherlands, below the Rhine-Meuse-Waal delta and above the Belgian border, absorbing almost none of the tourist attention that Amsterdam, Delft, and the tulip fields command. That is, for most visitors, a serious oversight. North Brabant is a province of medieval cathedral cities, creative industrial districts, national parkland, and one of the most exuberant carnival traditions in northern Europe. Love the Netherlands? Join our free newsletter for hidden Dutch gems → inlovewithnetherlands.substack.com The province stretches from the industrial creativity of Eindhoven in the east to the fortified town of Bergen op Zoom in the west, with the castle city of Breda and the medieval grandeur of ‘s-Hertogenbosch somewhere in between. North Brabant is one of the largest Dutch provinces by area and population, home to over 2.5 million people, yet…

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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 Papeneiland — The Café on the Corner Bill Clinton Loved

Café Papeneiland sits at the corner of the Prinsengracht and the Brouwersgracht, in a 17th-century building so charmingly crooked that the Delft tiles inside lean slightly to one side. It’s been a café since 1642. Bill Clinton stopped in once, ate a slice of apple pie, and the café has never quite let it go — there’s a small framed photo behind the bar. The apple pie really is the order: thick, warm, just enough cinnamon, served with whipped cream that doesn’t come from a can. Sit by the window upstairs and watch the canal boats turn the corner below.

👉 Visit the café

Around The Web

From Love Netherlands

The Wadden Islands — Choosing Your Island

The ferry from Den Helder leaves at half past eight on a grey April morning, and within minutes the Dutch coastline becomes abstract—a thin line of dunes and church spires receding into mist. The North Sea is the colour of wet concrete. Gulls wheel overhead. Ahead, invisible until the last moment, one of five inhabited Dutch Wadden Islands materialises out of the haze: a low, green shape, ringed with sand. Most travellers who make it this far…

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Photo: De Waddenzee by Uberprutser via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Dutch Food You Will Love

Kroket — The Older, Stranger Cousin of Bitterballen

A kroket is a finger-shaped roll of crumbed and deep-fried beef ragout — the same filling as bitterballen, but in a single satisfying portion the size of a thick chip. You eat it slid into a soft white roll with a smear of mustard, called a broodje kroket, and it’s the Dutch lunch counter’s defining order. The most famous come from automat-style FEBO walls in Amsterdam, where you slot a few coins in and pull a hot kroket out of a glass-fronted cabinet. There’s no shame in it — half the city has eaten one before a tram home.

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