Canals without crowds: finding Amsterdam's quieter waterways

The canal ring’s shadow

Most visitors to Amsterdam experience the canals via a predictable geography. The Prinsengracht for the Anne Frank House. The stretch of Herengracht near the Golden Bend for photographs. A canal boat that departs from near Centraal station and makes a 75-minute loop, covering all three of the main concentric canals. The canal ring is magnificent and worth the crowds, but it is not the whole of what Amsterdam’s water infrastructure has to offer.

The city has 165 canals in total, covering about 100 kilometres. The famous Grachtengordel — the UNESCO World Heritage ring of Herengracht, Keizersgracht, and Prinsengracht — accounts for only a fraction of that. The rest runs through residential neighbourhoods, under industrial bridges, through parts of the city that don’t appear in travel photography because they’re ordinary rather than picturesque — and occasionally through places that are genuinely beautiful without being famous.

This is a journal of some of those less-visited canals, from a September 2020 visit when the city was quieter than usual and I had time to follow the water wherever it went.

The Brouwersgracht at early morning

The Brouwersgracht — Brewers’ Canal — runs east-west at the northern edge of the Jordaan, connecting the ring canals to the IJ harbour. It was named for the breweries that once lined it in the 17th century; those buildings are now among the most coveted residential addresses in the city, long converted from industrial use to expensive apartments with original beams.

The Brouwersgracht appears on most top-ten Amsterdam lists, so it’s not exactly secret. But the crowds that cluster on the Prinsengracht rarely come this far north, and at 7:30 on a September morning it is frequently deserted. The light at that hour comes over the water from the east, hitting the brick facades directly and making them glow in a way that the afternoon light, which hits them from behind, doesn’t replicate. The houseboats are parked in rows along the banks, each with its own pot plants and bicycles and evidence of someone’s actual life.

The Egelantiersgracht in the Jordaan

The lateral canals of the Jordaan — the Bloemgracht, the Egelantiersgracht, the Leliegracht — are the ones that give the neighbourhood its particular depth. They run perpendicular to the main canals, shorter and narrower, with bridges low enough that a standing adult in a boat would need to duck.

The Egelantiersgracht is my favourite of the three. It has a stretch in the middle where the canal widens slightly and the trees on both banks lean toward each other, creating a green tunnel in summer that in September still has most of its leaves. The houses here are smaller than on Herengracht — less grand, but with the same 17th-century bones. Some have been maintained with obvious care; some look as though the last renovation was in 1960, which in a city that runs on renovation is itself a kind of rarity.

There are almost never tour boats on the Egelantiersgracht; it’s too narrow and too shallow. The only boats you’ll see are small private ones, occasionally bicycles-on-water, and the occasional paddleboard that someone is attempting with mixed success.

The Amstel and its quieter stretches

The Amstel — the river that gave the city its name, Amsterdam being a dam on the Amstel — runs through the centre from south to north and empties into the IJ. The stretch most visitors see is around the Magere Brug, the Skinny Bridge, one of Amsterdam’s most photographed landmarks. But the Amstel extends south of the city centre through less-visited territory.

Walking south along the Amstel from the Waterlooplein flea market, you pass the H’ART Museum (the former Hermitage) and the Amstelkerk, and then the city gradually loosens. The Amstelpark is about 30 minutes on foot from the centre, a park that runs along the river with occasional views of the water that feel rural despite being within cycling distance of the Rijksmuseum. In September 2020, I spent an hour there without seeing another tourist.

The Entrepotdok

The Entrepotdok is in Amsterdam Oost, just east of the Artis Royal Zoo. It is a long wharf — once the city’s main customs warehouse district, where goods from the VOC ships were stored and taxed — now converted to apartments, restaurants, and a small marina.

The dock is a canal in the sense that it’s a long water inlet, but it feels different from the ring canals: wider, more open, flanked by uniform 19th-century warehouse architecture rather than the varied gabled houses of the Jordaan. The scale is more industrial, the atmosphere more relaxed. The restaurants along the dock have terraces that face the water, and on a September evening they are full of people who look as though they work nearby rather than as though they are making the most of two days in Amsterdam.

The Entrepotdok connects easily to the broader Oost, which is a neighbourhood worth spending a morning in if you’ve covered the centre thoroughly.

Canal cruise options for the curious

If you want a different perspective on the canals, the historic city centre canal cruise to Jordaan covers the smaller Jordaan lateral canals as well as the main ring — a route that most of the larger glass-roofed boats can’t take because of bridge clearances. The smaller open boats that make this route get into the Bloemgracht and along the Brouwersgracht, which is a different experience from the standard tourist loop.

For something self-directed, the self-drive boat rental is available from several locations and allows you to take your own route. You don’t need a licence for the smaller electric boats, and you can spend an afternoon on exactly the stretches of water that interest you, stopping when you like.

The light in September

There is a specific quality of light in September in Amsterdam that photographers tend to know about and that most tourism material misrepresents by showing the city in the high-summer light of July and August. In September, the sun is lower; it comes off the water at an angle that creates long reflections on canal surfaces and catches the amber and brick of the buildings differently than the overhead summer light.

This has practical implications for photography, but also just for the quality of the experience. The canals look better in September, in my honest view, than they do in July. The crowds are also lower: the summer peak has passed, the school holiday is over, and the city sits at a more manageable density that lets you stop on a bridge without being moved along by the people behind you.

The autumn canal photography blog post explores this in more detail. The best time to visit Amsterdam guide places September and October as the city’s “sweet spot” season — quieter museums, reasonable prices, the possibility of actually walking on the Prinsengracht without feeling herded.

A note on getting lost

The best canal experience in Amsterdam is, I think, the unplanned one. Follow the water without a map. When a canal ends, turn and take the next one. Cross bridges at random. Note where the houseboats cluster, where the trees overhang, where a courtyard opens unexpectedly behind a gate. The canal ring Grachtengordel guide is a good primer, but the canal ring rewards wandering over planning.

Amsterdam is not a city where getting lost is dangerous. It’s small, it’s flat, and the canals provide orientation once you know that the ring curves outward from the centre. You can get lost for an hour and emerge within ten minutes of your hotel. Do it.