Sep 29, 2026
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Maastricht Netherlands Worth Visiting
Medieval squares, underground caves, and Burgundian flavours make this Dutch gem unmissable.
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Love Netherlands
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Dear Netherlands,
Amsterdam in April has a particular kind of quiet. The tulips are out in the park. The café terraces are full by ten. Somewhere in the Jordaan a church bell is telling the hour, and a barge is gliding past, and a child is learning to cycle without training wheels. This is the version of the Netherlands you came for.
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Photo: Photo by Vesta Rugilė Nausėdaitė on Unsplash
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In today’s email:
- Things to Do in Maastricht Netherlands: The Complete Visitor’s Guide
- At The Café — Café ‘t Smalle — Jordaan’s Tiny Canal Hideaway
- 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 — Dutch Cheese Beyond the Tourist Shops
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Things to Do in Maastricht Netherlands: The Complete Visitor’s Guide
👉 Read the full story
Maastricht does not feel like the rest of the Netherlands. The further south you travel into Limburg province, the more the country quietly reinvents itself. The flat polder landscape gives way to rolling hills. The Dutch language picks up a warm southern lilt. The cities carry a distinctly Burgundian flavour inherited from centuries of proximity to Belgium and France. If you want things to do in Maastricht Netherlands that go well beyond canal selfies, you have come to the right place. Roman ruins sit beneath a 17th-century basilica. The locals eat four-hour Sunday lunches without apology. And the river Maas reflects honey-coloured medieval towers at dusk. Love the Netherlands? Join our free newsletter for hidden Dutch gems → inlovewithnetherlands.com/subscribe Why Maastricht Stands Apart from Every Other Dutch City Most visitors arrive expecting a scaled-down Amsterdam. They leave…
👉 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
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
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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