Jun 03, 2026
|
Tracing Your Dutch Roots Home
Follow our gentle guide to discovering your ancestral town and connecting with your family’s Dutch heritage.
|
|
Love Netherlands
|
|
Dear Netherlands,
The Dutch have a word — gezellig — that doesn’t translate. It’s the feeling of a candle on a wet Tuesday. It’s a bar full of people who’ve known each other since school. It’s the brown café where the owner remembers your order and the rain outside makes the windows glow. You can’t chase it. You can only notice when it finds you.
|
|
Was this forwarded to you? Subscribe free and never miss an edition →
|
|
If the daily newsletter brings you closer to the Netherlands, our Sunday Premium Edition takes you deeper into it. Every Sunday you’ll receive travel deep dives, curated itineraries, regional stories, and hidden gems you won’t find anywhere else.
Upgrade for less than the price of a pint and see the Netherlands in a completely new way.
|
Photo via Love Netherlands
|
In today’s email:
- How to Plan a Dutch Heritage Trip to Your Ancestral Town
- At The Café — Café De Druif — A Sailors’ Bar With a Pirate’s Story
- Around The Web — Five Islands, One Tide — A Long Weekend on the Wadden, Volendam Day Trip from Amsterdam: The Complete Guide, Dutch Surnames of North Holland: Origins and Meanings + more
- From Love Netherlands — Rotterdam Day Trip from Amsterdam: The Complete 2026 Guide
- Dutch Food You Will Love — Bitterballen — The Small, Dangerous Joy of the Dutch Evening
|
How to Plan a Dutch Heritage Trip to Your Ancestral Town
👉 Read the full story
Your opa left Holland decades ago. Or perhaps your great-grandmother crossed the Atlantic as a young woman, carrying nothing but a small suitcase and the memory of a village church. Now you are making the journey in reverse — a Dutch heritage trip back to the land your family once called home. This guide shows you how to plan that journey. Step by step, from finding your ancestral town to standing at the gate of the church where your family were baptised and married for generations. Whether your roots lie in Friesland, South Holland, North Brabant, or Groningen, the path back is clearer than you might think. Before You Go: Start With Your Family Records The most rewarding Dutch heritage trips begin at home, not in the Netherlands. Gather what you already have: birth certificates, old letters, photographs, and family bibles. Look for clues — the name of a village, a church, a street.…
👉 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.
|
|
“Want deep dives into the Netherlands every Sunday? Our Premium readers already have their next edition waiting.”
|
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
|
Around The Web
|
From Love Netherlands
👉 Read the full story
|
Photo: Shutterstock
|
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
|
|
Know Someone Who Loves the Netherlands?
If you’re enjoying this letter, the best thing you could do is forward it to one friend who’d love the Netherlands too. This newsletter grows by word of mouth alone — every single subscriber came from someone sending it to someone else. Thank you for being one of the first.
|
|
Our daily newsletter is free and always will be. But for less than the price of a pint, you can upgrade to our Sunday Premium Edition, which gives you access to our travel deep dives, curated itineraries, and regional stories. Consider buying us a stroopwafel — it’s the Dutch way to say thank you.
|
Also From Our Family
Love Ireland too? Over 64,000 readers wake up each morning to the Love Ireland newsletter — loveireland.substack.com
Or Scotland? Join 43,000 Scotland lovers — lovescotland.substack.com
|
|
You’re reading Love Netherlands — a free letter about canal towns, hidden villages, and Dutch stories, delivered Monday to Friday.
inlovewithnetherlands.com ·
Unsubscribe
© 2026 Love Netherlands · Part of the Love To Visit LLC family
|