Jul 28, 2026
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Jordaan’s Hidden Gems Revealed
Fall for Amsterdam’s most authentic neighbourhood through secret canals, cosy cafés, and charming local corners.
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Love Netherlands
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Dear Netherlands,
It’s easy to miss the thing that makes the Netherlands special. It isn’t the windmills or the tulips or the canals, though all of those are real and beautiful. It’s a particular kind of attention — the way a Dutch baker arranges the croissants, the way a Dutch cycle lane goes exactly where you need it, the way a brown café has the same four regulars in the same four seats for forty years. Pay attention to that, and you’ll start to love the Netherlands in a way most visitors never do.
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Photo: Shutterstock
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In today’s email:
- The Jordaan, Amsterdam: The Complete Neighbourhood Guide (2026)
- At The Café — Café ‘t Smalle — Jordaan’s Tiny Canal Hideaway
- Around The Web — Gouda Day Trip from Amsterdam or Rotterdam: The Complete Guide (2026), Tracing Your Family in Overijssel: A Heritage Travel Plan, Tracing Your Family in North Brabant: A Heritage Travel Plan + more
- From Love Netherlands — Tracing Your Family in Utrecht: A Heritage Travel Plan
- Dutch Food You Will Love — Dutch Cheese Beyond the Tourist Shops
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The Jordaan, Amsterdam: The Complete Neighbourhood Guide (2026)
👉 Read the full story
The Jordaan is Amsterdam’s most beloved neighbourhood — a tangle of narrow canals, leaning gabled houses, and cobblestone lanes that rewards slow exploration above any other part of the city. Whether you plan to spend a full day here or arrive for a single afternoon, the Jordaan Amsterdam experience is one you will carry home long after the trams have faded into memory. This guide covers everything you need to know: the best sights, the finest places to eat, the hidden hofjes, and how to make the most of every hour in this extraordinary corner of the Dutch capital. Love the Netherlands? Join our free newsletter for hidden Dutch gems → inlovewithnetherlands.com/subscribe What Makes the Jordaan Special? A Working-Class District Turned Cultural Gem The Jordaan’s story spans four centuries. City planners laid it out in the early 1600s as a working-class quarter, home to dyers, tanners, and…
👉 Read the full story
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 ‘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
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Around The Web
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From Love Netherlands
Your ancestor left Utrecht for somewhere far away. Perhaps it was New Amsterdam in the 1630s. Perhaps it was the Dutch East Indies a century later. Perhaps it was South Africa during the Boer era. Whatever the story, the records are still there — waiting for you in the heart of the Netherlands. Utrecht province sits at the geographic centre of the Netherlands. It is a small province, but a rich one. Its archives hold centuries of births, deaths,…
👉 Read the full story
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Photo via Love Netherlands
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Dutch Food You Will Love
Dutch Cheese Beyond the Tourist Shops
The cheese in every Amsterdam tourist-shop window is usually young and mild. Nice enough for a sandwich. But the real Dutch cheese is aged — four, six, sometimes twelve months — and it’s where the country’s centuries of dairy craft actually show up. Aged Gouda picks up tiny white crystals and a deep nutty flavour that sits somewhere between an English cheddar and an Italian Parmigiano. You have to find a farmhouse dairy, or a Friday market stall in Alkmaar, or the kind of small family shop that closes at lunchtime for 90 minutes and nobody complains.
👉 Read the full story
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