May 13, 2026

The Wadden Islands

Choosing Your Island

Love Netherlands

Dear Netherlands,

There are two kinds of mornings in the Dutch spring. The kind where you cycle to the market and come home with warm cheese and rye bread and a handful of wild tulips. And the kind where it rains sideways for an hour, then the sun comes out and everything looks like a Vermeer. Today, if you’re lucky, is one of those mornings.

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Photo: De Waddenzee by Uberprutser via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

In today’s email:

• The Wadden Islands — Choosing Your Island
• At The Café — Café ‘t Smalle — Jordaan’s Tiny Canal Hideaway
• Around The Web — Haarlem Travel Guide, Delft — A Day in the Town That Made Vermeer, Groningen Travel Guide + more
• From Love Netherlands — Leiden Travel Guide
• Dutch Food You Will Love — Erwtensoep — The Dutch Winter Soup That Made the Country

The Wadden Islands — Choosing Your Island

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The ferry from Den Helder leaves at half past eight on a grey April morning, and within minutes the Dutch coastline becomes abstract—a thin line of dunes and church spires receding into mist. The North Sea is the colour of wet concrete. Gulls wheel overhead. Ahead, invisible until the last moment, one of five inhabited Dutch Wadden Islands materialises out of the haze: a low, green shape, ringed with sand. Most travellers who make it this far north know the Wadden Islands exist. Few know how to choose between them. The five Dutch islands— Texel , Vlieland , Terschelling , Ameland , and Schiermonnikoog —form a UNESCO World Heritage site, a restless archipelago strung along the North Sea coast where the Wadden Sea stretches and contracts with the tides. Each island has developed its own character, shaped by isolation, landscape, and the particular temperament of the people who chose to…

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At The Café

Café ‘t Smalle — Jordaan’s Tiny Canal Hideaway

Café ‘t Smalle is exactly what its name says: small. It’s tucked on the Egelantiersgracht in the Jordaan, with a handful of tables inside and a tiny floating terrace on the canal that’s always full the moment the sun comes out. The building has been a café since 1786. You don’t go for the menu — you go because it’s one of the most beautiful places in Amsterdam to sit with a glass of wine and watch the boats drift past. Rain or shine, locals have been doing exactly this for two hundred and forty years.

👉 Visit the café

Around The Web

From Love Netherlands

Leiden Travel Guide

The Rapenburg canal catches the afternoon light differently than the rest of Leiden ‘s waterways. The water reflects the gabled houses in near-perfect symmetry, and the willows lean in as though listening to the stories of the centuries that have unfolded along this particular stretch. It is here, locals insist without needing to consult any guidebook, that you find the most beautiful canal in the Netherlands. Not the grandest. Not the most…

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Photo: Group portrait of the Varsity team of Njord (rowing subassoc via Wikimedia Commons…

Dutch Food You Will Love

Erwtensoep — The Dutch Winter Soup That Made the Country

Erwtensoep is a thick, green, nearly-a-stew soup made from split peas, smoked sausage, pork, celery, leek, and patience. The Dutch have a test for whether it’s ready — if your spoon can stand up in the pot, it’s done. It was the food of the canal skaters in winter, the men repairing dikes, the families waiting out a long January. It’s still served in every good café on cold days, with thick rye bread and butter. Order it once on a rainy afternoon and you’ll understand why the Dutch love their winters more than most countries love their summers.

👉 Read the full story

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