Jul 29, 2026
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Discover Your Groningen Roots
Uncover your Dutch ancestry through archives, heritage sites, and a thoughtfully planned three-day journey.
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Love Netherlands
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Dear Netherlands,
There’s a version of the Netherlands that tourists rarely find. It’s in Jordaan on a Saturday morning, where the Noordermarkt smells of fresh bread and old cheese. It’s in Utrecht, where canal-level wharfs have become the most beautiful cafés in Europe. It’s in Delft, where Vermeer’s light still falls across the same brick walls.
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Photo via Love Netherlands
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In today’s email:
- Tracing Your Family in Groningen: A Heritage Travel Plan
- At The Café — Café De Jaren — Amsterdam’s Light-Filled Reading Café
- Around The Web — Tracing Your Family in Utrecht: A Heritage Travel Plan, Gouda Day Trip from Amsterdam or Rotterdam: The Complete Guide (2026), Tracing Your Family in Overijssel: A Heritage Travel Plan + more
- From Love Netherlands — The Jordaan, Amsterdam: The Complete Neighbourhood Guide (2026)
- Dutch Food You Will Love — Speculaas — The Spiced Biscuit That Smells Like Christmas
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Tracing Your Family in Groningen: A Heritage Travel Plan
👉 Read the full story
Your great-grandparents left Groningen a long time ago. They packed what they could, said goodbye to the flat fields and wide skies, and sailed away to South Africa, America, or Australia. Now it is your turn to go back. This guide will help you trace your Dutch family roots in Groningen — and plan a trip that means something. Why Groningen Matters for Dutch Heritage Research Groningen is the northernmost province of the Netherlands. It sits at the edge of Europe, where the land meets the Wadden Sea. For centuries, its people lived by farming, trading, and seafaring. When times grew hard — and they often did — many of them left. Thousands of Groningers emigrated to North America in the 19th century. Many settled in Michigan, Iowa, and South Dakota. Others went to South Africa, joining the Boer farming communities that shaped that country’s Dutch-speaking culture. Today, their…
👉 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 Jaren — Amsterdam’s Light-Filled Reading Café
Café De Jaren on the Nieuwe Doelenstraat is a wide, two-storey grand café with a sun-drenched terrace built right out over the Amstel. It opened in 1990 in a former bank, and the high ceilings, white walls and stacks of newspapers in twelve languages give it the feel of a public reading room with espresso. Locals come for breakfast with the FT, for long afternoon meetings, and for the canal-side terrace where on summer afternoons every chair faces the water. The kitchen does proper meals all day, the cake counter is generous, and nobody minds if you stay three hours.
👉 Visit the café
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Around The Web
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From Love Netherlands
The Jordaan is Amsterdam’s most beloved neighbourhood — a tangle of narrow canals, leaning gabled houses, and cobblestone lanes that rewards slow exploration above any other part of the city. Whether you plan to spend a full day here or arrive for a single afternoon, the Jordaan Amsterdam experience is one you will carry home long after the trams have faded into memory. This guide covers everything you need to know: the best sights, the finest…
👉 Read the full story
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Photo: Shutterstock
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Dutch Food You Will Love
Speculaas — The Spiced Biscuit That Smells Like Christmas
Speculaas is a thin, crisp biscuit pressed with a wooden mould into intricate patterns — windmills, ships, faces from old folktales — and spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, white pepper and cardamom. It’s eaten year-round but reaches its peak in early December when bakeries make whole speculaaspoppen the size of your forearm. The big windmill-shaped biscuits show up free on saucers at every café from October onwards. A good speculaas should snap cleanly between your fingers and release the warm spice smell before you’ve even raised it to your mouth.
👉 Read the full story
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