Amsterdam body to body massage in a summer heatwave

Why an Amsterdam hot week is worse indoors than out

The city gets a handful of genuinely hot nights each summer, and they are notable less for the temperature than for what the buildings do with it. Central housing was designed to keep warmth in through long northern winters, so brick holds the afternoon sun and gives it back all evening. Air conditioning is uncommon in older hotels and in nearly all apartments, and windows on canal facing rooms are often small or restricted. The result is a bedroom at eight in the evening that is several degrees warmer than the street it looks onto, and a visitor who has spent the day outdoors coming back to something worse than what they left.

What to do to the room before you book anything

Almost all of the difference is made in the afternoon and none of it is complicated. Close the curtains before the sun reaches the window rather than after, since keeping heat out is possible and getting it out again largely is not. Open the window in the early evening once the outside air has dropped below the inside air, which here is usually later than people assume, and if the room has a fan point it out of the window rather than at the bed, because moving hot air out beats stirring it around. A cold shower an hour before does more for the next two hours than one taken immediately before does.

The format the heat actually improves

Soapy work starts with warm water and foam and ends in water, and it is the one booking on this site that leaves you cooler at the end than it found you. In a top floor room in August that is not a small distinction, it is the whole evening. It needs a bathroom worth spending the first half in, which in a hot week is a far easier requirement than it is in January, since nobody minds a tiled room on an outside wall when the problem is heat. Ninety minutes at 270 euros is the length that fits it. The soapy page sets out how the two halves run.

Full contact work in a hot room, adjusted

Body to body is warm work by design, and in a heatwave that has to be taken seriously rather than waved away. The adjustments are real and they work: a lighter oil used sparingly instead of a heavy one applied generously, the window open well before the hour, a lighter towel, and a slower pace with more of the session spent on hands only passages. Booked at nine rather than at seven also helps more than it sounds, because a west facing room is a different proposition after dark. Said plainly in the thread, the suggestion that comes back will be shaped around the room rather than around the format.

What to avoid in the hot week

Nuru is the one to think twice about, not because the gel minds the heat but because the format is built around continuous full contact with no relief in it anywhere, which in a room at twenty-nine degrees is a lot to ask of both people. Long sessions are the other. Three hours in an airless room is not the same proposition as three hours in October, and two is usually the better decision in the same money range. The eight hour block is genuinely uncomfortable in a room with no air conditioning and honesty is better than a sale here, so the thread will say so if you ask for one.

Couples, and four people in a small room

Two guests and two therapists in a compact hotel room generate a quantity of heat that has nowhere to go, and in a hot week that turns a good booking into a difficult one. A couple sharing one therapist at 360 euros an hour is the more comfortable arrangement by a clear margin in August, and the same couple in February would be better served the other way round. With a large room, or with air conditioning that works, take whichever you prefer. Say in the first message which of the two you mean, because it changes the shape of the evening as well as the figure. The couples page has both arrangements set out.

Timing a hot night booking

Later is better, and later than you think. Amsterdam in high summer keeps light in the sky until nearly eleven, so an eight o'clock booking in a west facing room is still a booking in full sun. Ten is often the better hour, and midnight is not unusual in a hot week for exactly this reason. The arrival window is unchanged: forty to sixty minutes anywhere central, heat or no heat. What does change slightly is availability, since the hot nights are the nights everybody else is also awake and reconsidering their plans.

The figures, which the season does not touch

An hour is 180 euros, ninety minutes 270, two hours 360 and three hours 540, in August exactly as in November. Two therapists working a single guest come to 360 an hour between them. A couple sharing one therapist pays 360 an hour, and a couple taking a therapist each pays 720. Half of whichever figure applies is settled before she sets out on nearly every booking, and a returning client asking for an hour or two the same day at a city address settles in full on arrival. Nothing is added for the weather, the day of the week or the hour. The booking page works the deposit through in figures.

Writing it when the room is still at twenty-eight degrees

Say where you are, the hour in Amsterdam time, the length, one therapist or two, and then one line that matters more in this week than in any other: whether the room has air conditioning, which way it faces and whether the window opens properly. That line decides what gets suggested. Everyone in the room is twenty-one or over, and a photograph document can be asked for on the doorstep. What a session holds is set by your therapist, who names her limits at the start and keeps them there. The questions page takes what is left.