City of CanalsAmsterdam.

The UNESCO Canal Ring at dawn — the 17th-century merchant city built on 165 canals in a series of concentric arcs, the reflections of the gabled merchant houses in the still water, the houseboats quiet, the bicycles locked to every bridge railing. Before 09:00 the canals belong to a few joggers, the delivery boats, and the occasional heron. The light from the east catches the brick facades and turns them the specific amber of Dutch Golden Age painting. This is what the canal ring looks like without the tourist boats, the queue for the Anne Frank House, and the bachelor parties. It lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The national museum of the Netherlands — 8,000 objects across 80 galleries covering 800 years of Dutch and Flemish art and history. The unmissable works: Rembrandt's Night Watch (1642, 3.6 x 4.4 metres, the largest and most complex Dutch Golden Age painting), Vermeer's The Milkmaid (c.1658, one of only 36 authenticated Vermeers in existence), and the dollhouses in the decorative arts section (17th-century miniature canal houses with the same craftsmanship as real furniture). The building itself — neo-Gothic by Pierre Cuypers, 1885 — is worth examining: you cycle through the underpass of a national museum.

The most characterful neighbourhood in Amsterdam — built in the early 17th century for artisans, weavers, dyers and workers who could not afford the merchant houses of the Canal Ring, now the most expensive neighbourhood in the city. The Jordaan has the highest density of independent galleries, speciality food shops, brown cafés (bruine kroegen — dark-wood, candlelit, beer-and-bitterballen) and hofjes (hidden almshouse courtyards accessible through inconspicuous gates on the street) in Amsterdam. The key street: Westerstraat for the Saturday market. The key canal: Bloemgracht (the most beautiful canal in the Jordaan, often called the "Herengracht of the Jordaan").

The two essential Dutch food-and-drink rituals: nieuwe haring (new herring, eaten raw, held by the tail and lowered into the mouth, or chopped and served with onions and pickles in a white roll — available May to July when the season opens, but sold year-round as "hollandse haring") and jenever (Dutch gin, the ancestor of English gin, aged in oak casks, sweeter and lower in juniper than London dry gin, served in a tulip glass filled to the brim so the first sip must be taken with the glass on the bar). The combination of raw herring and a kopstoot (head butt — a glass of jenever with a beer chaser) is the most Dutch evening available.