A Glass of Water Before the Knock

An evening out in Amsterdam tends to involve a drink. Wine with dinner, a beer at the square, a glass at the theatre bar during the interval. None of it needs to be mentioned in a booking, and none of it is a problem in itself. But a booking made on the way back falls at the end of all that, and the forty minutes or so between the last glass and the knock at the door are worth a little thought.

Water, then more water

This is the dull part, and the part that does the heavy lifting. A large glass of water when you get back to the room, and another while you wait, makes a real difference to how you feel an hour later. Alcohol dehydrates. So does a warm restaurant, a crowded bar and a long walk. A session involving warm oil in a heated room adds its own share. Guests who drink water before she arrives notice the difference. Guests who do not usually notice it at the halfway point.

Tap water in Amsterdam is good to drink and free. Plenty of hotel rooms also have a bottle or two in the room, which is a better use of the minibar than anything else in it.

Leave the miniatures alone

The temptation, on getting back to a quiet room with some time to spare, is to open something from the fridge. Resist it. The last drink of the evening should have been at the table or the bar, not in the room ten minutes before she arrives. A guest who is a little flatter than he was at the bar is better company than one who has topped up.

There is also a practical point. She decides what a session includes, and she may decline or end a visit when a guest is in no state to listen. That is rare, and it almost never happens to a guest who stopped drinking when he booked. It is worth making sure you are nowhere near it. The guide to courtesy after a few drinks explains the rule and why the fee stays due when a visit is ended.

Something to eat

After dinner, this takes care of itself. After an evening of drinks with no real meal, it does not, and it matters more than the water. A sandwich, a portion of fries from one of the late counters on the way back, or even something from a night shop will make the next hour more comfortable. A full meal right before a massage is uncomfortable; an empty stomach after several drinks is worse.

A shower

Five minutes under warm water does three things at once. It clears the smell of the restaurant or the bar from your hair and skin. It warms you after the walk back. And it marks the change from the evening to the room in a way that nothing else quite does. Plenty of guests shower as a matter of course. The ones who arrive back later than planned and skip it tend to wish they had not.

The room

Turn the heating up a little. A room that has been empty all evening is cooler than it seems when you walk in wearing a coat, and it will feel cooler still when you are lying on a bed. Turn the main light off and a lamp on. Put the phone on the table, face up, with the sound on, in case she writes from the lobby. If a balance is due at the door, have it ready in the amount the thread agreed.

Five minutes of quiet

Once all that is done, sit down. It is tempting to fill the last five minutes with the television or the phone, but a few minutes doing nothing much, with the lights low and a glass of water, is a better way to arrive at the next hour. The evening was loud. The room does not need to be.

The page about drinks at the two squares covers the timing of a booking made from a bar, and the erotic oil massage page explains why a warm room and a warm body matter for that format in particular.

A glass of water, a shower, a warm room, a lamp. Nothing on the list is interesting, and all of it shows in the first ten minutes.