The Best Places to Drink and Stay in the Netherlands

The Market Hotel sits on the Grote Markt, Groningen's central square, inside a building that looks like it's been there for centuries and was finished last Tuesday. The hotel leans into the architectural nostalgia with full commitment while hiding a thoroughly modern spa, sauna, Turkish bath, and fitness center behind the period details. An all-day café, a bakery, and a rooftop terrace cover most hours and moods.

Henrique Sá Pessoa, the Portuguese chef with a following back home, runs set menus here that pull Portuguese home cooking toward something more cosmopolitan, with the occasional East Asian lean. The portions stay generous even when the plating gets precise. Bespoke cocktails and a cool bar make the lunch crowd feel like they've found something. Set-menu restaurant, the kind where you dress up just enough to feel good about it.

The basement of Hotel New York turns out to be one of the more atmospheric dining rooms in Rotterdam, fitted out like a jazz-age Manhattan club and anchored by an eleven-meter bar that earns its keep. It's a modern cuisine restaurant with French leanings, but the kitchen moves comfortably between beurre blanc and yuzu without making a fuss about it. The oyster bar pulls in its own crowd. Dress like you mean it.

A 19-room hotel carved out of a magnificent old prison building in Zwolle, where the team behind De Librije added rooms largely so dinner guests wouldn't have to face the drive home. Butlers work the corridors, beds are by Auning, and junior suites add sitting rooms that start to feel genuinely residential. The restaurant access alone makes other hotel dining programs look apologetic.

Fort Isabella's 17th-century barracks have been quietly repurposed into a thirty-room hotel, the original monumental windows and soaring ceilings kept intact. Auping beds and checkerboard rain showers fill the rooms; a shared living room with a bar holds the social center together. Woods, a canal, and a food hall sit just outside, and the old city is ten minutes by bike, which feels about right for a place that spent centuries being decidedly off-limits.

A hotel built into the Kennemer dunes, with the North Sea on one side and rolling dune landscape on the other. The lobby opens with a taxidermy installation whose natural history narrative traces back to Dutch botanist Jac. P. Thijsse, which sets the tone: this is a place that takes its surroundings seriously. A rooftop infinity pool, a sauna, and sea-view suites round things out. Circuit Park Zandvoort is five minutes away, Haarlem a short train ride.

Shelves lined with tequila and mezcal set the tone at Botanero, a Mexican-leaning cantina bar in central Rotterdam. The cocktail list leans on classics, and Dutch spirits sneak in alongside the Latin American lineup. Snacks pull from South American traditions with a Dutch edge, and there are tacos if you need something to anchor the mezcal. Bright, casual, and easy to drop into at almost any hour.

The grid of square windows that makes up the facade is very slightly crooked, like blocks stacked by a child, which turns out to be a decent metaphor for the whole hotel. CitizenM is an airport hotel that wants to be your friend, a budget-minded design property with king beds, rain showers, glass bathroom pods, and in-room iPads that remember your lighting preferences. A canteen runs 24 hours, and central Amsterdam is a 20-minute train ride away.

The atrium alone makes a case for the airport hotel's revival: it soars above the Axis cocktail bar and a lobby that doesn't feel like a waiting room. Connected directly to Schiphol's terminal, this Hilton leans into modernist architecture and rooms styled for travelers who notice these things. The Bowery Restaurant blends Asian cooking with Dutch touches, which is more interesting than it sounds. A Michelin Selected Hotel, and a reasonable argument for skipping the city entirely.

The hotel names itself after the chant Dutch football fans have been roaring since forever, which tells you exactly what you're in for. Tennis courts, squash, basketball, and indoor football fill the grounds, the non-athletic spaces are styled to look like ball courts, and one restaurant has a bowling lane running alongside the tables. A spa is on hand when you've inevitably overdone it. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

A centuries-old Dutch country estate that doesn't lean into the antiques, Parc Broekhuizen is a small hotel where the rooms run to sculptural furniture and clean lines, with windows looking out over garden or lake. The kitchen takes the seasons seriously, which at this latitude means it has opinions. Woodland paths and still water fill the gaps between meals, and the whole place feels less like a retreat from the world than a reason to pay closer attention to it.

A 29-room boutique hotel in a restored 19th-century building right on the IJssel River, where several rooms look directly onto the water. The Pillows brand does self-consciously well-appointed comfort at a human scale, and this outpost in underrated Deventer delivers the full version: proper beds, an informal restaurant and lounge, and the IJssel Restobar opening onto a terrace at the river's edge, which is the obvious place to be.

A converted water tower that looks like a castle looms over this hotel in Dordrecht, and that sets the tone for everything else. Rooms are scattered across the old tower quarters, the gardens, a repurposed iron reservoir, and a few that float on the Wantij river. The pump room is now a market, and the restaurant draws heavily from the hotel's own gardens. Staying here involves a genuine decision about which kind of unusual you prefer.

A 17th-century orphanage, now a hotel, with the original stone scrollwork and red-shuttered windows still intact. The team took their time on the renovation and it shows: period bones, modern interior, fresh flowers, and enough natural light to make you feel virtuous before heading out to the cheese market or a canal. Yes, the cheese is from here. You already knew that, but it still feels good to say.

A former maritime academy turned boutique hotel sitting right on Vlissingen's seaside promenade, with the North Sea close enough that the rooms feel like they were designed for people who couldn't stop staring at it. The building is a national monument, so the student quarters stayed compact, though the Dutch have made clever use of a loft and a steep miller's staircase in the family quad rooms. An all-day restaurant and a bar with a sea-facing terrace round it out.

A shepherd who takes guests along on his rounds supplies the bistro here, which says quite a lot about the philosophy of this forested lodge near Hoge Veluwe National Park. The lodge has been around forever, and the rooms, forest cabins, and converted farmhouse all lean into the surrounding woodland rather than competing with it. A lobby fireplace and outdoor firepit handle the evenings, and workshop space draws retreat groups who need trees nearby to think straight.

Seven individually named rooms, each with its own entrance, fill a former country estate that spent part of its life as a hunting lodge before earning national monument status. It's a boutique B&B on farmland that's now an 18-hole golf course next door, so the setting hasn't exactly gone wild. Breakfast comes with regional products, and the honesty bar keeps things convivial without anyone having to perform hospitality at you.

A bar built into the altar sets the tone at this converted Gothic church, where the vaulted nave, stained glass, and surrounding cemetery have been kept more or less as found. It's a sixteen-room hotel in a small Zeeland town, selected by the Michelin Guide, four kilometers from the coast and an easy drive from Bruges and Ghent. Sleeping under centuries-old arches is either deeply peaceful or mildly haunting, depending on your disposition.

A converted livestock farm on a family estate outside Milheeze, Op d'n Kreijtenberg is a twelve-suite bed and breakfast where breakfast arrives on a tiered stand with freshly baked rolls and local farm produce. Rooms split between botanical wallpapers in mustard and amber and cooler slate-and-copper schemes, with ground-floor suites opening to private terraces. The Stippelberg Golf Course runs right alongside, and the nature reserve is a short walk.

The old hunting grounds of the Dukes of Brabant make for a particular kind of backdrop, and The Duke Club leans into it: a stately country-house hotel wrapped around one of the Netherlands' serious golf courses, south of the city canal-house circuit entirely. Twenty suites mix saturated color and patterned wallpaper with spa bathrooms and butler service, which is either a contradiction or exactly the point. Fine dining, a brasserie, and a spa complete the picture.

A manor house sitting in the woods outside Nistelrode, The Duke Suites leans hard into the English country estate fantasy: checkerboard marble floors, a sweeping oak staircase, crystal chandeliers, and crimson headboards. All 18 suites run over 70 square meters and come with freestanding baths and 24-hour butler service. There's an 18-hole golf course, a Finnish sauna, and a whirlpool for when the grandeur gets exhausting.

A 13th-century castle on the edge of the North Limburg village of Baarlo, surrounded by gardens quiet enough to make you forget your phone exists. The rooms lean into the Pillows name with Egyptian cotton piled high and beamed ceilings overhead, contemporary comforts tucked into medieval bones. Fine dining draws on the estate's own kitchen garden, and bikes are available for when the countryside starts looking too good to ignore from a window.

A restored seaweed shed on Texel's eastern edge now houses some of the rooms at this adults-only boutique hotel, a converted farmhouse a short walk from the Wadden Sea. Twelve rooms split between garden suites, farm suites, and the shed's Wier Lodges, with copper fittings, stone basins, and Texel wool duvets throughout. The restaurant runs a single surprise menu that follows the island's seasons, which is either exciting or anxiety-inducing depending on your relationship with menus.

A converted parsonage on the island of Texel, surrounded by farmland and vegetable gardens, Bij Jef is a small boutique hotel with a genuinely luxurious feel. Open-plan suites are bright and minimalist, with Dutch-made beds and wool bedding sourced nearby. Some look out over the village rooftops, others face the fields. Breakfast arrives in courses, with champagne, and the beach is a short bike ride away.

Two cocktail bars for the price of one grand hotel: a wood-panelled, nautical-themed room tucked below the lobby, and a sleeker, louder sibling upstairs with a sound system that makes the chandeliers nervous. Both open onto terraces over the Amstel River, which is the kind of view that makes a second round feel responsible. The bartenders take the classics seriously, and the whole operation carries the unhurried ease of somewhere that has been doing this for a very long time.

Bar Mokum is a De Pijp cocktail bar you reach by climbing a steep staircase that tends to jam up with out-of-towners hunting for a vibe, so reserving a seat is the polite move. The drinks are twists on classics with Dutch slang for names, and the back room is dressed up as the Red Light District, which is the closest you'll get to Amsterdam's most photographed street without the photographing. Food stops at olives and nuts.

Bar Strangelove is the bar inside Lab111, a cinema in a former laboratory, so the whole thing already feels like a plot point. The menu commits fully to film puns, with pizzas named after indie movies and cocktails that include a Halle Blueberry and a Sacred Kir. You can come for a screening or skip it, and the pizza beats cinema nachos either way. Expect relaxed prices and people who say "auteur" without irony.

Café de Klepel is a canal-side brown-café type on a street with several near-twins, so if the sidewalk tables are gone when the sun comes out, a backup is a few steps away. It takes the usual bar snacks a notch up, with a beer list that goes past the pilsner and sparkling wine that isn't just prosecco or cava. Good for solo celebrating, since the anchovies don't require a feast to justify showing up.

Café Gollem is a small brown bar on a quiet lane off Spuistraat, devoted to Belgian beer in a city that mostly drinks Heineken out of habit. The menu runs long on ales, krieks, and geuzes, plus the rare Westvleteren, a bottle people reportedly drive across a border to buy by the crate. Expect dim light, cramped tables, and patrons who read the beer list like a chapter of scripture.

The bar at No.18 is a bruine café, which means brown walls, brown ceiling, and centuries of cigarette smoke baked into the woodwork, all of it legally protected so nobody can touch it. Locals call it "standing Hoppe" because that's what you do. An old-school Amsterdam pub that has been around forever, it's the kind of place that makes a gin and tonic feel like a historical document.

A cocktail bar in the basement plays vinyl while you're still deciding whether to do the short or long tasting menu upstairs, which sets the tone nicely. CUE holds a Michelin star, and the chef builds each course from three or four elements, leaning on the grill, fermentation, and a Nordic restraint that keeps things precise without feeling clinical. The sommelier leans toward natural wines and earns the pairing fee.

This is a Japanese-themed cocktail bar on Reguliersdwarsstraat, Amsterdam's strip of loud, neighboring bars, with private karaoke rooms for the friend who needs to sing at least weekly. The drinks are sharper than the packed floor suggests, with shochu, absinthe, and shiso oil showing up in the cocktails, plus sake if your vocal cords need looking after. Expect to be shoulder to shoulder with strangers who'll be friends by round two.

Jazz Café Alto is a small, dark jazz bar on a Leidseplein side street, a stretch otherwise given over to steakhouses and pubs for people who just left a coffee shop. There's live music every night, and the room fills up fast, so arrive early. They don't serve food, so eat first. The stools at the bar are the smart seat, since the drink line gets long once the band starts.

This is a tea house on Rozengracht where the cocktails contain no alcohol and nobody seems bothered. You sit at low tables over tea-infused drinks, CBD lattes, and herby tonics, while upstairs the quieter rooms host traditional ceremonies, some guided by staff happy to get into tea mythology. The shelves of loose leaf and teaware exist for anyone ready to retire the grocery-store tea bag.

Paindemie is a two-level burger and sando spot on Kinkerstraat, and you walk in through what passes for a Japanese subway station, neon signs and plastic chairs included. Upstairs, a marble-topped speakeasy pours sake, beer, and classic cocktails under warm lamps, and the menu pairs a Big Mac riff on pain de mie with an escargot toastie served on actual plates. Reserve upstairs, or take your drink down to the egg salad sando.

This is the Brouwerij 't IJ taproom, a round pavilion planted in the middle of Vondelpark, which makes it the rare beer stop where the toughest decision is deck chair or jeu de boules. Expect the usual 't IJ pours, plus sandwiches, pastries, and smoothies for the strollers and dog owners drifting through. A band sometimes plays nearby, and the Dutch weather supplies its own drama.

The whole point here is standing upright, glass touching your lips, because the low wooden bar makes it nearly impossible to do otherwise. That's how they've done it in this old Amsterdam tasting house for centuries, and the room looks exactly as you'd expect: unchanged, unhurried, and slightly miraculous. The jenever and house liqueurs come from a small distillery a few doors down, and the list is long enough to keep you honest about how many you'll try.

A cocktail bar inside the Pulitzer hotel where the drinks were developed with a New York fragrance house, so the menu is as much about what you smell as what you taste. Forest-green walls, marble, glowing orbs, and hushed Art Deco calm make the whole thing feel like stepping into someone's very tasteful 1930s study. Order slowly; there's no reason to rush.

Every surface in this cocktail bar reflects back the drink in your hand, which is either poetic or a little overwhelming depending on how many Bols liqueurs you correctly identified in the tasting hall you walked through to get here. The House of Bols runs a tour before letting you in, which means entry comes with a cocktail and a genever shot built into the price. The mirror room is the payoff, and the liqueur selection behind the bar is genuinely hard to argue with.

Tin beer signs and chalk boards cover the varnished plywood walls, and the bare wooden floor suggests nobody ever worried much about the mess. This is a traditional Belgian beer bar in Amsterdam, with a list of well over a hundred bottles and a handful of draught taps weighted heavily toward Belgian and Dutch brews. Late on weekends, the name, which means "crazy," stops being ironic and starts being a warning.

A cocktail bar named for a South American and New Zealand fruit that shows up in some of the drinks, Feijoa sits at the busy corner of Vijzelstraat and Reguliersdwarsstraat. The short menu skews sweet, fruity, and creamy, but the bartenders are happiest going off-script, especially on classics. The tell: neighboring bar staff fill the stools before and after their own shifts, which is as reliable a signal as any that the team here knows how to pour.

A burger joint on Albert Cuypstraat that is also, for those who know to ask, a cocktail bar tucked behind it. The setup borrows a page from New York's speakeasy playbook: order a burger if you like, but the actual point is a well-made drink somewhere that most passersby will never find. The kind of place that rewards the mildly curious and inconveniences nobody else.

Two glowing Corian bars shaped like river stones face each other across the lobby divide of the Grand Sofitel, which sets the tone for what this cocktail bar is going for. Champagne flights, oysters from a raw bar, and well-made cocktails draw a dressed-up crowd. It skews designer and upmarket, so dress accordingly and order accordingly. If you want a brown bar, Amsterdam has better ones a short walk away.

Cactus plants crowd the bar top and provocative art covers the walls, which is about right for a cocktail lounge named after Charles Bukowski. Henry's is the sleeker half of a two-bar operation on Oosterpark, with the adjoining Bar Bukowski leaning more literary dive. At Henry's, the mood runs loud and loose, the crowd skews hip, and the drinks are the point. A good spot to start the night before you forget what you ordered.

The barrels lining the walls here aren't decorative, they hold the jenever and liqueurs you're about to drink. An old-school Dutch proeflokaal, or tasting house, this one has been around forever on a quiet lane just off the Dam, its dark wood interior feeling less like preservation and more like nothing ever needed changing. Order a traditional pour and stand at the bar the way generations of Amsterdammers have, without overthinking it.

A ceiling of hanging crystal glass catches the light on the tenth floor of the WestCord Fashion Hotel, which is either dramatic or a lot, depending on your mood. This cocktail bar sits near the A10 ring road, a tram ride from the center, though the more honest draw is that Schiphol is ten minutes away. Black club-style decor and panoramic city views give it a sleek, transit-lounge-with-ambition feel.

The building used to be something official and grand, and the hotel inside it leans into that with a cocktail bar done in stark black and glass that shouldn't work but does. A row of plush booth seats faces a communal high table that looks like a fish tank scaled for people, drawing an even split of fashion industry types and people on expenses. Tunes Bar is the kind of place where the architecture does half the work, and nobody minds.