A couple massage on your reunion evening in Amsterdam

The first two hours in the room are the awkward ones

Almost every couple who lives apart reports the same thing and almost none of them expect it. You have both been looking forward to this for six weeks, you finally close the door, and then neither of you quite knows what to do with the next hour. There is unpacking that takes four minutes and is stretched to twenty. There is news to catch up on, delivered in the wrong order. It passes, but it passes more slowly than anyone wants it to.

Booking an hour into the evening does not remove that stretch, but it gives it an end. Something is happening at nine, so the fidgeting has a boundary around it, and neither of you has to be the one proposing anything.

Where to place the hour

Two placements work and one does not. The first is early: a booking an hour or two after the later partner has dropped a bag, before either of you has gone out for anything. It puts the evening on its own footing straight away and it suits couples whose flights both land in daylight.

The second is late: back to the room at eleven, with the hour starting at midnight. Nothing about the tariff changes after dark and arrival holds at forty to sixty minutes through the night, so the only cost of a late placement is the sleep you were going to lose anyway.

What rarely works is the middle: a booking at seven when one of you lands at five. That hour will be spent watching a phone rather than a road, and the stretch it was supposed to fix happens in a taxi instead.

How long to book on a first evening

Ninety minutes is the length couples reach for and it is usually right. An hour is enough time for the work and not quite enough for two people to properly stop performing, which on a reunion night is the thing you are actually buying. Two hours is the better booking when the visit is only two nights long and this one is carrying most of the weight.

For the two of you, ninety minutes is the length to aim at, and asking for a therapist each simply doubles it. Stretch it to two hours and the fee grows by a third over the ninety minute figure. Whichever way you go, say it in the first message, because the length is easier to set before a therapist has arranged her evening around it than after.

One therapist is often the right call on night one

Couples who have been apart a while tend to assume a therapist each is the fuller version of the booking. It is the more expensive one, and on a first evening it is not always the better one. Two parallel sessions are magnificent when both people are rested and up for it. On a night when one of you has been awake since four in the morning for a connection, they can feel like two appointments sharing a room.

One therapist gives the evening a centre instead of splitting it. She works with one of you while the other is in the room, and the two halves balance out without anybody timing them. Save the pair for the second night, when the two therapist arrangement gets the audience it deserves.

What to have done before she knocks

Very little, and all of it dull. Turn the heating up beyond daytime comfort, because a room that feels fine dressed at nine is cold at eleven undressed. Work by a lamp and leave the ceiling light off. Get the room number into the thread the moment you have it, and put any oddity about the building in there too: a street door that locks after eleven, a lift that needs a key card, a reception that wants visitors met downstairs.

She brings her own towels and oils, so nothing has to be bought. What does help is deciding, before she arrives, which of you is going first. Couples who leave that to the doorway lose ten minutes of an hour they paid for to a polite argument.

Which format suits the night you both arrived

Slow and warm beats novel. Erotic oil work asks nothing of the room, leaves nothing to clean up, and is forgiving of a body that has been sitting in an airport since lunchtime. Sensual work is the same answer in a different register and takes the largest share of first evening bookings here.

Leave nuru and soapy for later in the visit. They want a shower you have already used and a floor you have already walked on barefoot, which on the first night neither of you has. If the pair of you are wide awake rather than tired, tantra at ninety minutes or two hours is the one that works with that state rather than against it.

Arranging it before anybody takes off

The reunion evening is the one booking that should not be left until you are both in the city. Whichever partner is more organised writes, gives the address, the hour in Amsterdam time, the length and whether it is one therapist or two, and says plainly that there are two of you and that you have both agreed to it.

Half the fee confirms it, because a booking made more than a day ahead always carries a deposit. The answer names the therapist, the figure and an arrival window of forty to sixty minutes. After that the only thing either of you has to do is be in the room, which on a night you have both been counting down to is not a difficult instruction. The booking page sets out the sequence and the questions page covers the rest.