Aug 23, 2026
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The Hague and Scheveningen
Where Dutch democracy meets Golden Age masterpieces and the grand sweep of the North Sea coast An introduction to The Hague and Scheveningen There is something quietly remarkable a…
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Love Netherlands
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Dear Netherlands,
There’s an old saying in the Netherlands: God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland. Drive across Zeeland, past the Delta Works, and you start to understand. Or stand at Kinderdijk at sunrise, when the windmills catch the first light and the canals are mirror-flat, and you can feel 800 years of stubbornness built into the landscape.
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Michielverbeek via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
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In today’s email:
- The Hague and Scheveningen: Sea, Art and the Seat of Power
- At The Café — Café Hoppe — The Brown Café at the Centre of Amsterdam
- Around The Web — Edam Day Trip from Amsterdam: Cheese, Canals and Genuine Dutch Charm, Tracing Your North Holland Heritage: Archives, Records and Ancestral Towns, Maastricht, Netherlands: The Complete Visitor’s Guide (2026) + more
- From Love Netherlands — Cycling in the Netherlands: A Complete Visitor’s Guide (2026)
- Dutch Food You Will Love — Boerenkaas — The Farmhouse Cheese With a Protected Name
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The Hague and Scheveningen: Sea, Art and the Seat of Power
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The Hague and Scheveningen: Sea, Art and the Seat of Power Where Dutch democracy meets Golden Age masterpieces and the grand sweep of the North Sea coast An introduction to The Hague and Scheveningen There is something quietly remarkable about The Hague. It is not the Netherlands’ constitutional capital — that honour belongs to Amsterdam — yet it is where the country is actually governed, where international justice is administered, and where some of the world’s most celebrated paintings hang in a modest 17th-century mansion on the edge of a pond. The Dutch have a word for this kind of understated excellence: gezellig — convivial, warm, quietly perfect. Den Haag, as the locals call it, embodies it completely. The city takes its name from des Graven Hage , meaning “the Count’s Hedge” — a reference to the hunting grounds of the medieval Counts of Holland who built a small castle here in…
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At The Café
Café Hoppe — The Brown Café at the Centre of Amsterdam
Café Hoppe on the Spui has been pouring beer since 1670 — long enough that the wooden floor has sunk slightly at the door from three and a half centuries of footfall. It’s the kind of place where the bartender knows the regulars’ orders, the tourists get treated exactly the same as the locals, and the bitterballen come out exactly hot enough to burn the roof of your mouth if you don’t wait. It sits right in the middle of the city, a few minutes’ walk from the Dam, and it’s one of the last genuinely authentic brown cafés you can still find without trying. Come in the late afternoon, sit outside on the pavement, and order a beer.
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Around The Web
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From Love Netherlands
The Dutch invented cycling as a way of life. With more bicycles than people — roughly 23 million bikes for 17 million residents — the Netherlands treats the bicycle not as a leisure item but as a primary mode of transport. When you cycle here, you enter a country that has spent decades engineering its roads, paths, and cities around the rider. For visitors, that means smooth fietspad (cycle paths) stretching across every province, clear signage,…
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Photo: Shutterstock
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Dutch Food You Will Love
Boerenkaas — The Farmhouse Cheese With a Protected Name
Boerenkaas is the protected designation for cheese made on a Dutch farm with raw milk from that farm’s own cows, by the farmer themselves, with no industrial shortcuts. It tastes nothing like the supermarket Gouda. Younger wheels are creamy and sweet; aged ones develop deep crystalline cracks and a flavour that lingers for minutes. Every Friday, in Alkmaar’s old Waagplein cheese market, you’ll see boerenkaas being weighed on antique scales — a pageant for tourists and a real trade for cheesemakers. Pair it with apple, walnut and a glass of jenever.
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