Amsterdam body to body massage on a rainy night

Rain here is not the rain you packed for

Amsterdam gets its rain in a particular way: not often torrential, frequently sideways, and spread across more days of the year than most visitors have planned around. The wind off the open water turns an umbrella into a liability within about two streets, which is why so few locals carry one. Cobbles hold water in the joints, so shoes go through by the second bridge rather than the tenth. The practical effect is that an evening does not get cancelled by rain so much as slowly abandoned: one drink somewhere becomes going back to change, and going back to change becomes staying in. That is the point at which most first messages on this site get written.

What rain does not change

The arrival window holds. Forty to sixty minutes to anywhere in the centre is the same figure in a downpour as on a dry evening, because the distances are short and nobody is crossing a motorway to reach you. The figures hold too. There is no weather charge anywhere on this site, so an hour in a storm costs what an hour in June costs, every longer length keeps its rate as well, and nothing is added for her journey inside the ring. A room at Schiphol or an airport hotel is arranged separately whatever the weather is doing, with the drive agreed with you before the hour is held.

What rain does change, which is the first five minutes

Someone who has crossed the city in wet weather arrives with a wet coat, and a wet coat has to go somewhere that is not the bed or the chair you will sit in afterwards. A hook, a radiator or a bathroom rail is the whole of the requirement, and having decided on it before she knocks removes the only awkward part of a wet arrival. The second thing is time: a few minutes of warmth before anything starts is worth more on a wet night than any adjustment to the session itself. Neither of those is hospitality for its own sake. Both mean the booked hour is the session rather than the recovery from getting there.

The format that suits a night like this

Warm oil work is what a soaked and irritable body wants, and full contact oil work is what it wants most. Nothing has to be laid out, nothing has to be rinsed, and the shower stays where it belongs, which is afterwards rather than in the middle. That matters on a rainy night specifically, because a guest who has just got dry has no appetite for a format that starts by getting wet again. It also means the format works in a room you arrived in three hours ago and have not inspected. Body to body and oil work are the two to look at.

Soapy and nuru on a wet evening

Both are fine bookings and both have the same small mismatch with the mood of the night. Soapy begins in the bathroom with warm water, which is either exactly right or exactly wrong depending on whether you have spent the day wet already, and guests are usually clear about which. Nuru asks for a waterproof layer and a rinse at the end, so it takes something out of the booking at both ends. Neither is a problem if the bathroom is good and the booking is ninety minutes rather than an hour. If the appeal of the evening is being dry and staying dry, the oil formats are the honest recommendation and the answer in the thread will say so.

Bicycles, and why nobody is late

Visitors sometimes assume the weather will delay an arrival because they picture a bicycle in it. Journeys here are made in whatever way makes the hour work, and in the middle of a storm that is not a bicycle. The window is given as a range rather than a minute for the ordinary reasons: a building that needs a key, a lift that is slow, a reception that wants a visitor met. Plan against the far edge of the window and you will not be caught half changed. If sleep is winning before she has set out, write it in the thread and the start moves rather than the booking collapsing.

The evening a forecast turns into a booking

A fair number of these are written in the afternoon, from a phone, by somebody looking at a radar map and concluding that the evening is settled. Booking early is the better move in every respect: more of the roster is free, the room has time to warm up, and the hour can be placed where you actually want it rather than where what is left allows. It also means the deposit rule is the one for an advance booking, which is half the fee ahead. A message sent at nine for the same evening can still work, and on a wet Tuesday it frequently does, but a Friday in the dark half of the year is a different proposition.

Moving a booking when the weather turns

One change of date is free. The request has to reach the thread more than twenty-four hours before the booked time and the new date has to fall inside fourteen days, and the deposit travels across whole. A second move, or one asked for inside the final day, is measured on the notice scale exactly as a cancellation sent at that moment would be, and whatever is not kept goes on to the new date. Rain is not force majeure, so a forecast that changes is a move rather than a free release. What counts as force majeure is a transport shutdown or a serious disruption in the city, and in that case the deposit becomes credit against a date you do not have to pick straight away.

Writing it while the window is still streaming

Where you are, the hour in Amsterdam time, how long, one therapist or two, and what the room is like. A line about the coat and the radiator is not required and is genuinely useful. Everyone in the room is twenty-one or over and a document may be asked for on the doorstep. Your therapist decides what the session includes and says where her limits are at the start of the visit. The booking page sets out the order the messages run in, and the questions page covers the rest.