De Wallen has the most beautiful canal architecture in Amsterdam and almost nobody sees it, because by mid-morning the district is doing its other job. Come at seven. First light, gulls, delivery bikes, and the oldest streets in the city entirely to yourself.
From Centraal, cut through to Oudezijds Voorburgwal and walk the canal's whole length south — leaning gables, gevelstenen (the carved gable stones that named houses before numbers did), and water with nobody on it. Turn at the Grimburgwal corner and come back up the far bank to the Oude Kerk, consecrated in 1306 and the oldest building in Amsterdam. The square around it is at its kindest at this hour.
Then north on Warmoesstraat and onto the Zeedijk, the medieval sea wall that still curves like the dyke it was. In 't Aepjen at number one is one of the city's two surviving wooden houses. Follow the curve down through Chinatown — the He Hua temple's roofline does its quiet work — and land on the Nieuwmarkt as the cafés around the Waag, the 1488 city gate, put their chairs out. The metro home is under the square.
