Jun 01, 2026
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Volendam’s Hidden Charm Awaits
Discover picturesque harbours, smoked eel delicacies, and cheese markets just 45 minutes from Amsterdam.
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Love Netherlands
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Dear Netherlands,
Amsterdam in April has a particular kind of quiet. The tulips are out in the park. The café terraces are full by ten. Somewhere in the Jordaan a church bell is telling the hour, and a barge is gliding past, and a child is learning to cycle without training wheels. This is the version of the Netherlands you came for.
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Photo: Shutterstock
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In today’s email:
- Volendam Day Trip from Amsterdam: The Complete Guide
- At The Café — Café Karpershoek — Amsterdam’s Oldest Café, Right by the Station
- Around The Web — Dutch Surnames of North Holland: Origins and Meanings, Amsterdam Canal Cruise: A Complete Guide to Choosing and Booking, Travelling the Netherlands by Train: The Complete Guide + more
- From Love Netherlands — Dutch Surnames of North Holland: Origins and Meanings
- Dutch Food You Will Love — Poffertjes — The Tiny Pancakes Sold From Copper Pans
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Volendam Day Trip from Amsterdam: The Complete Guide
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Just 20 kilometres north of Amsterdam, the fishing village of Volendam has been drawing visitors for well over a century. A Volendam day trip from Amsterdam is one of the easiest and most rewarding excursions you can make during any visit to the Netherlands. Within an hour of leaving the city, you’ll find yourself on a harbour lined with painted wooden houses, eating smoked eel straight from the stalls, and watching the world drift by on the Markermeer. Pair it with the cheese-scented streets of nearby Edam, and you have a near-perfect Dutch day out. Love the Netherlands? Join our free newsletter for hidden Dutch gems → inlovewithnetherlands.substack.com Why Volendam is Worth the Trip There is no shortage of opinions about Volendam. Some travellers dismiss it as too tourist-facing; others call it one of the most authentically Dutch afternoons they had. The truth sits somewhere in…
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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 Karpershoek — Amsterdam’s Oldest Café, Right by the Station
Café Karpershoek opened in 1606 — older than Café Hoppe, older than the Westerkerk, older than most things in Amsterdam that are still standing. It’s a small brown café two minutes from Centraal Station, easy to miss in the rush of arriving travellers. The floor is sand, scattered fresh every morning the way every Dutch tavern used to do it. The walls are nicotine-stained from before the smoking ban and lined with antique tin signs. It’s where you go for your first beer in Amsterdam if you want to start the way the city started.
👉 Visit the café
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Around The Web
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From Love Netherlands
Your family name may have started on the banks of an Amsterdam canal. It might have come from the fields of a Haarlemmermeer polder. Or it could trace back to a fishing village on the shores of the IJsselmeer. If your surname comes from North Holland, it tells a story. These Dutch surnames from North Holland carry the region’s entire history inside them. North Holland (Noord-Holland) is one of the most populous provinces in the Netherlands. It…
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Photo via Love Netherlands
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Dutch Food You Will Love
Poffertjes — The Tiny Pancakes Sold From Copper Pans
Poffertjes are small, fluffy yeasted pancakes made on cast-iron pans with little round dimples, dusted with icing sugar and topped with a knob of butter. You eat them with a wooden fork from a paper plate, ten or twelve at a time, while standing at a stall on the street or sitting in a market square. They appear at every Dutch outdoor festival from spring to Christmas markets, and the smell of butter and sugar drifting across a town square is one of the most reliable cues that you’ve found a real local event rather than a tourist set-piece. A poffertjes pan can hold over forty at once — it takes about three minutes to fill a plate.
👉 Read the full story
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