Amsterdam massages for the experienced traveller, arranged without hurry

Take the word massage back to its plainest meaning and this is the whole of it. A woman whose page you have already read travels to the room you are staying in, at an hour you picked yourself, and works for the length the two of you agreed beforehand. She arrives carrying warm oil, towels and a clean sheet, so there is nothing for you to lay out and nothing of yours left marked afterwards.

No address of ours appears anywhere in that arrangement. You are not asked to find an unlit doorway in a district you last walked through decades ago, and you are not asked to put your coat back on at midnight to get home. The evening takes place where you already are, which for most guests here is the reason it suits them.

If someone is travelling with you and will be in the same room, that is a booking for two rather than two bookings, and it carries its own figure. Say it in your opening message and the total that comes back already covers both of you.

There are four steps and no others. Nothing happens by telephone, nothing needs an account, and no part of it is hidden behind a screen you have to sign up to reach.

1. You write once

   Name the district you are staying in, the hour you have in mind and roughly how long you would like her to stay. Add a name from the roster if one has already caught your eye, or leave that open.

2. An answer comes back

   It carries a name, the time she can be at your door and the whole figure in euro with the tax already inside it. Ask for a different name or a later hour and the next answer is written the same way.

3. You say yes, and only then

   Half of the figure holds the hour on a first booking, and the reply sets out how that half is sent. The room number is asked for at this point and not a minute earlier.

4. She knocks

   The balance is settled once she is inside. From there the time belongs to the two of you and nobody interrupts it.

Guests who have spent a working life in rented rooms usually know exactly what they would change about one, and most of it can be arranged in the thread rather than raised awkwardly at the door. Room warmth is asked for more often than anything else, and it takes one line to arrange: say you would like it warmer than the thermostat suggests and she will expect it that way.

A bed that sits low, a bed that sits high, a second pillow under the knees, the curtains drawn before she arrives, the overhead light off and the lamp on instead. None of that is unusual and none of it needs a reason given for it. Put it in the same message as the hour and it becomes part of the arrangement.

The first quarter of an hour is deliberately unhurried, and it stays that way whether you booked sixty minutes or one hundred and eighty. Nobody is watching a clock on your behalf, and she does not begin working until the two of you have talked long enough for the room to feel like yours again.

Plenty of guests here booked something like this once, in a different decade, and have not since. The city has changed less than the arrangement has. Then it was a telephone call to a number in a listing, a voice you could not place and a figure you found out at the end. Now it is a written thread you keep, a name you looked at first and a total you read before anything is agreed.

The half sent ahead is the part that tends to be new. It exists because an hour held for you is an hour nobody else can take, and it is settled by card or by one of the money apps rather than in an envelope. What is sent ahead, what is kept and what comes back is set out line by line on the booking terms page, in ordinary sentences.

Everything else you remember still holds. You still choose the hour, you still choose the woman, and the evening still ends when the time you booked ends and not before. If any of that has left you with a question, the step-by-step guide for a first booking in years walks the whole thing through once more, slowly.

Will anyone downstairs know why she is here?

No. She arrives dressed for the street, carrying an ordinary bag, and goes up the way any other visitor would. Nothing is said at a desk and nothing is left behind that says anything either.

I am well past twenty-one. Will she still ask to see something?

She may, and it is asked of every guest of every age so that nobody is picked out. A document is looked at once at the door and handed straight back. It is not copied, photographed or written down anywhere.

What if I would rather not choose the technique myself?

Then say so. Describe how the day has gone and how you would like to feel by the end of the evening, and the reply puts one name forward with a plain reason for it. You are free to ask for something else instead.

My plans on a trip move. What happens then?

Tell us as soon as you know. A confirmed booking can be moved once, asked for more than twenty-four hours ahead, to a date inside the next fortnight, and what was sent ahead moves across with it.

Each technique below has a page of its own with the pace, the oil and the length written out. If none of the names mean much yet, that is usual, and the reply will suggest one once you have said how the day has gone.

• Tantra MassageFrom €180

• Erotic Oil MassageFrom €180

• Sensual MassageFrom €180

• 4-Hand MassageFrom €360

• Body-to-Body MassageFrom €180

• Couples MassageFrom €360

Every technique in full

One figure covers the session and her journey across the districts listed below. Nothing is added for a late hour, a weekend or an address at the far side of the canal ring, and the whole total is put in the thread before you are asked to confirm anything.

On a first booking half of the figure is sent ahead to hold the hour, and the balance is settled once she is in the room, so you are never paying in full for an evening that has not started. A guest the house already knows, asking for an hour or two on the same day, settles the whole figure at the door instead.

How a booking is put together