Sep 27, 2026
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Amersfoort, Netherlands Without Crowds
Medieval walls, canal houses, and genuine Dutch charm—minus the tourist masses.
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Love Netherlands
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Dear Netherlands,
There’s a version of the Netherlands that tourists rarely find. It’s in Jordaan on a Saturday morning, where the Noordermarkt smells of fresh bread and old cheese. It’s in Utrecht, where canal-level wharfs have become the most beautiful cafés in Europe. It’s in Delft, where Vermeer’s light still falls across the same brick walls.
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Photo: Shutterstock
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In today’s email:
- Amersfoort, Netherlands: The Complete Visitor’s Guide (2026)
- At The Café — Café Karpershoek — Amsterdam’s Oldest Café, Right by the Station
- Around The Web — The Love Netherlands Guide № 006: Gezelligheid, Discover Your Groningen Roots: Heritage, Diaspora, and Family History, The Love Netherlands Guide № 005: Dutch Cycling Culture + more
- From Love Netherlands — The Dutch-American Homecoming: From New York to Old Holland
- Dutch Food You Will Love — Poffertjes — The Tiny Pancakes Sold From Copper Pans
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Amersfoort, Netherlands: The Complete Visitor’s Guide (2026)
👉 Read the full story
Amersfoort, Netherlands, is the medieval city that most visitors to the country never reach. That is their loss. Thirty-five minutes from Amsterdam by direct train, Amersfoort sits behind intact city walls, its old canals lined with gabled houses, its towers still standing after 700 years. No coach tours queue at the gate. No selfie crowds block the bridges. Just one of the best-preserved medieval towns in the Netherlands, waiting to be discovered. Love the Netherlands? Join our free newsletter for hidden Dutch gems → inlovewithnetherlands.com/subscribe Piet Mondrian was born here in 1872. The city’s Koppelpoort — a double medieval gateway straddling both land and water — is the largest of its kind in the Netherlands and has stood since 1425. The Muurhuizen, houses built directly into the old city walls, exist almost nowhere else in Europe. Amersfoort rewards visitors who arrive without…
👉 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 Karpershoek — Amsterdam’s Oldest Café, Right by the Station
Café Karpershoek opened in 1606 — older than Café Hoppe, older than the Westerkerk, older than most things in Amsterdam that are still standing. It’s a small brown café two minutes from Centraal Station, easy to miss in the rush of arriving travellers. The floor is sand, scattered fresh every morning the way every Dutch tavern used to do it. The walls are nicotine-stained from before the smoking ban and lined with antique tin signs. It’s where you go for your first beer in Amsterdam if you want to start the way the city started.
👉 Visit the café
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Around The Web
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From Love Netherlands
You land at Schiphol and something strange happens. The flat landscape outside the window looks familiar. The windmill on the horizon matches the painting your grandparents kept in their hallway. You know this place. Your family left it 150 years ago, but you know it. Around 4.5 million Americans claim Dutch ancestry. Most know their family came from the Netherlands. Far fewer have ever stood in the town their great-great-grandparents left…
👉 Read the full story
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Photo via Love Netherlands
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Dutch Food You Will Love
Poffertjes — The Tiny Pancakes Sold From Copper Pans
Poffertjes are small, fluffy yeasted pancakes made on cast-iron pans with little round dimples, dusted with icing sugar and topped with a knob of butter. You eat them with a wooden fork from a paper plate, ten or twelve at a time, while standing at a stall on the street or sitting in a market square. They appear at every Dutch outdoor festival from spring to Christmas markets, and the smell of butter and sugar drifting across a town square is one of the most reliable cues that you’ve found a real local event rather than a tourist set-piece. A poffertjes pan can hold over forty at once — it takes about three minutes to fill a plate.
👉 Read the full story
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