Amsterdam couples massage when one of you has an early meeting

Counting backwards from the alarm

Start at the hour the working partner has to be awake and work backwards. Subtract the sleep they actually need, not the amount they claim to manage on. Subtract twenty minutes for the settling that happens after a session ends and she has gone. Subtract the length of the booking. What you are left with is the latest sensible start, and if it has already passed, the answer is a shorter booking rather than a later one. An alarm at half past six, seven hours of sleep and ninety minutes of session gives a start no later than half past eight. That is the whole calculation and it takes ten seconds.

The latest sensible start, by length

Against a six thirty alarm: sixty minutes can start as late as nine, ninety minutes at half past eight, two hours at eight. Against a seven thirty alarm each of those moves an hour later. Against an alarm at six, which happens on the mornings with a flight in them, sixty minutes at half past eight is the honest answer and anything longer is a decision to be tired. None of this is a rule the house imposes. It is arithmetic, and the reason it appears on a page rather than in a conversation is that nobody does it well at nine in the evening.

Formats that leave a body ready to sleep

Oil work is the whole answer. Sensual massage and erotic oil massage ask nothing of the room beyond a bed and warm air, and a body that has had ninety minutes of slow work tends to go under within the hour after she leaves. Naked massage is the same work with nothing between, and body to body adds contact and still leaves nothing to clean. These four are the list for a night before an early meeting, and there is no honest fifth.

Formats to keep for another evening

Nuru and soapy are good bookings on the wrong night. Gel wants a shower afterwards that both of you will use, and foam starts in the bathroom and depends on what that bathroom turns out to be, which in a room booked by somebody's travel department is a lottery. Add half an hour to the end of the evening for each of them and the arithmetic in the section above stops working. Keep them for the evening before a free morning, or for the added weekend, and take oil on the night before the meeting.

The shower question, answered honestly

Oil does not require a shower before sleep and most people do not take one. That is the practical difference between an oil evening and a gel one on a night with an alarm: twenty-five minutes, a wet bathroom and a second wind at eleven o'clock that nobody asked for. If the working partner is the kind of person who cannot sleep without washing, add the time to the calculation rather than pretending it does not exist. The other half of the couple has no alarm and can do whatever they like with the rest of the evening.

One therapist or two, when time is the constraint

This is the night for a therapist each, at 720 euros an hour. Two sessions running side by side finish at the same moment, which means ninety minutes of evening occupies ninety minutes of clock instead of stretching across a longer stretch of it. One therapist between you at 360 an hour is the better evening when there is time and the worse one when there is not. It also needs less notice, which is the argument on the other side. Put your choice in the opening message, because it changes both the figure and how far ahead the evening has to be agreed.

The figures for a short weekday evening

Sixty minutes for two of you sharing one therapist is 360 euros; with a therapist each it is 720. At ninety minutes the two figures are 540 and 1,080. A booking made more than twenty-four hours ahead confirms with half, so 180 goes ahead on the 360 and 270 on the 540, with the balance settled on arrival. A first booking with the house carries the same half whatever the hour and however soon it starts. There is no evening rate and nothing is added for her journey inside the ring, so a nine o'clock start costs exactly what a three o'clock one would.

The arrival window, and why you plan against sixty

Forty to sixty minutes from the moment the booking is agreed, the same in Centrum, the Jordaan, Oud-Zuid, De Pijp and Zuidas. On a night with an alarm at the end of it, plan against sixty rather than forty and the calculation holds either way. Twenty spare minutes are easy to spend and twenty missing ones are not. If the two of you are at a Schiphol airport hotel before a morning flight, that window does not apply: those evenings are arranged separately, with the length of the journey agreed in writing before the hour is fixed.

When the meeting moves, as meetings do

A review that shifts from Thursday morning to Wednesday afternoon changes which evening is free, and the booking can follow it. One change of date is free, asked for more than twenty-four hours before the booked hour and landing within a fortnight, and the deposit travels across intact. A second move, or one asked for on the day, is read on the notice scale exactly as a cancellation sent at that moment would be. If the meeting simply gets earlier and the evening stays, shorten the booking rather than cancelling it: an hour still works where ninety minutes no longer does. The questions page deals with whatever this one has left out.