Borrel’s Tour de Pays Bas

This past summer, we closed Borrel for an extended break. For the most part, we are very quiet during July and August. So this year, we decided to use that as an opportunity to change gears and work on another (still Borrel-adjacent!) project: an extensive bike trip through the Netherlands that we chronicled in our email newsletter.

Without getting overly political, we both have a preference for transport on two wheels rather than four (the self-powered kind that is!) and nowhere is that preference greater catered to than in the Netherlands. It’s amazing how you can navigate pretty much the entire country via bike lane – and safely separated from car traffic. It’s something that’s inspired us since we tried biking from my parents’ home in Rotterdam to Delft for a daytrip. It was not only something we tremendously enjoyed but also a privilege we felt should not be taken for granted (particularly as we find our beloved bike lanes under threat here at home).

Eleven years ago, we did a short intercity bike trip for our honeymoon. We had a great time (and considering we were on Justin’s parents’ heavy Dutch city bikes, we still covered a fair deal of ground!). But we always wanted to get proper bikes for the job and invest in a longer journey. This blog features the daily write ups that we sent out in our newsletter this summer.

We hope you’ll come away a bit inspired by not only the routes we take but all the cozy bruin cafes we hit up along the way (it was still a bit of a research trip, after all! Haha).