Apr 29, 2026
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Why Utrecht’s Canals Have Two Levels
and the Lower One Is the Better One
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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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Image: Shutterstock
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In today’s email:
- Why Utrecht’s Canals Have Two Levels — and the Lower One Is the Better One
- At The Café — Café Locus Publicus — Rotterdam’s Belgian Beer Headquarters
- Around The Web — The Dutch Festival That Turns Maastricht Into a Different Country and more
- From Love Netherlands — Why the Dutch Only Make Pea Soup When It’s Cold Enough to Skate
- Dutch Food You Will Love — Dutch Cheese Beyond the Tourist Shops
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Why Utrecht’s Canals Have Two Levels — and the Lower One Is the Better One
👉 Read the full story
Every visitor to the Netherlands goes to Amsterdam. A smaller group makes it to Delft or Rotterdam. Almost nobody visits Utrecht — and that is exactly what makes it worth going. Utrecht has a canal system unlike any other in the world. Two levels. Street level above, where cyclists and pedestrians pass. And below — the wharf — where the water sits several metres down, and the real city breathes. What Makes Utrecht’s Canals Different Amsterdam’s canal houses rise straight from the water’s edge. In Utrecht, the canal sits below street level. Between the water and the road there is a wide stone terrace — a wharf — with vaulted cellars cut into the wall beneath the houses above. These are the werfkelders. Wharf cellars. Builders dug them in the 13th century. The Oudegracht — Old Canal — was a trading artery then. Boats from the Rhine brought cloth, spices, wine, and grain. The cool, dry…
👉 Read the full story
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At The Café
Café Locus Publicus — Rotterdam’s Belgian Beer Headquarters
Locus Publicus is a wood-panelled café on the Oostzeedijk in Rotterdam, with more than 200 beers on the menu and a chalkboard of rotating Belgian taps that changes every fortnight. Rotterdam is mostly modern after the 1940 bombing, but Locus is the city’s quiet exception — wooden floors, candles in glass jars, a cat that sleeps on the bar. Locals come for the Trappist selection and the kitchen’s straightforward menu of stoofpotten and good charcuterie boards. It’s the bar that proves Rotterdam has the same drinking culture as Amsterdam, just told quieter.
👉 Visit the café
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Around The Web
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From Love Netherlands
The Netherlands has an unwritten rule about pea soup. Nobody voted on it. Nobody wrote it down. Every Dutch person simply knows: you make erwtensoep when it is cold enough to skate on the canals. Not a little chilly. Not November mild. Properly cold. Canal-freezing cold. That is the rule. What Is Snert? Dutch people do not call it erwtensoep at home. They call it snert . The name is blunt and honest, which suits the soup perfectly. Snert starts…
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Image: Shutterstock
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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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