Aug 19, 2026
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Utrecht, Netherlands Complete Guide
Discover canal charm, world-class museums, and unforgettable day trips in this often-overlooked Dutch gem.
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Love Netherlands
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Dear Netherlands,
If you walk through Haarlem early on a weekday morning, you can still feel the rhythm of a 17th-century town that never quite left. Coffee at a canal-side café, a short cycle to the old centre, a pause at a bookshop that’s been in the same family for three generations. The Dutch don’t advertise this. They just live it.
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Photo via Love Netherlands
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In today’s email:
- Utrecht, Netherlands: The Complete City Guide (2026)
- At The Café — Café Locus Publicus — Rotterdam’s Belgian Beer Headquarters
- Around The Web — Maastricht, Netherlands: The Complete Visitor’s Guide (2026), Best Time to Visit the Netherlands: A Month-by-Month Guide (2026), Discover Your North Holland Roots: Heritage, Diaspora, and Family History + more
- From Love Netherlands — Tracing Your Dutch-Indonesian Roots: A Heritage Guide for the Indo Diaspora
- Dutch Food You Will Love — Speculaas — The Spiced Biscuit That Smells Like Christmas
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Utrecht, Netherlands: The Complete City Guide (2026)
👉 Read the full story
Utrecht sits at the heart of the Netherlands and quietly ranks as one of its most rewarding cities. With around 360,000 inhabitants, it is the country’s fourth largest city, yet it draws only a fraction of the crowds that pour through Amsterdam. The ancient Oudegracht canal cuts through the centre, and below the street level, wharf-side restaurants and bars occupy medieval cellar vaults that open directly onto the water. The Dom Tower rises 112 metres over terracotta rooftops. Cyclists outnumber pedestrians on every street. Utrecht is not trying to impress you. It simply is. Love the Netherlands? Join our free newsletter for hidden Dutch gems → inlovewithnetherlands.com/subscribe Why Visit Utrecht? Most visitors arrive in the Netherlands through Amsterdam and stay there. That is understandable, but Utrecht offers something distinctly different. People have lived here continuously since…
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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 Locus Publicus — Rotterdam’s Belgian Beer Headquarters
Locus Publicus is a wood-panelled café on the Oostzeedijk in Rotterdam, with more than 200 beers on the menu and a chalkboard of rotating Belgian taps that changes every fortnight. Rotterdam is mostly modern after the 1940 bombing, but Locus is the city’s quiet exception — wooden floors, candles in glass jars, a cat that sleeps on the bar. Locals come for the Trappist selection and the kitchen’s straightforward menu of stoofpotten and good charcuterie boards. It’s the bar that proves Rotterdam has the same drinking culture as Amsterdam, just told quieter.
👉 Visit the café
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Around The Web
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From Love Netherlands
Your opa spoke Dutch at home. Your grandmother cooked rijsttafel every Sunday. You grew up hearing stories about a place across the ocean. Now you want to find out more about where your family really came from. If you have Dutch-Indonesian roots, you are part of a large and proud community. Millions of people around the world share this heritage. Many are now searching for their family history. The good news is that the Netherlands holds many of…
👉 Read the full story
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Photo via Love Netherlands
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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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