Massage Amsterdam on a cold January day of museums, wind and early dark
Written for visitorsAfter the holidays the city goes quiet. January brings short grey days, wind off the water and rain that cannot decide whether to be sleet, and the visitors who come then spend their days hurrying between museums. A massage in Amsterdam in a warm room is one of the pleasures of coming at this time.
January is the quiet month. The holiday crowds have gone home, hotel prices drop, and the museums are noticeably calmer than in summer. The cost is the weather: daylight from about a quarter to nine until about five, temperatures hovering just above freezing, and a wind on the open squares that goes straight through a coat. Visitors who choose this month spend their days moving quickly from one warm interior to the next, with cold walks in between.
Cold walks and warm galleries
Winter sightseeing is a cycle of extremes. Coats come off in a hot museum, go back on for the walk across a windy square, and come off again in a café. Shoulders hunch against the wind, hands stay in pockets, and the body never quite settles. The museums that fill a January day sit some distance apart, too: the big collections on Museumplein, the canal-house museums on the ring, the maritime museum out by the eastern docks. Moving between them means trams that are warm and crowded and short walks that are anything but. By late afternoon, when the light goes, nearly everyone wants the same thing: to be indoors for the rest of the day.
A January massage in Amsterdam, booked as the light goes
Write when it starts to get dark. Give your address, the room and floor, the length, and the hour you will be back, allowing time for a long warm shower. January evenings are quieter than summer ones, which tends to make a same-day request easier to fill. A first booking with the house still sends half ahead, while a guest the house already knows, asking for an hour or two later the same day at a city address, pays it all at the door. The free move entry explains what happens if the weather changes your plans for a later day.
Heat the room properly
Old hotels and canal-house flats can be draughty in winter. Turn the heating up as soon as you come in, draw the curtains against the cold glass, and check that the window is properly shut, because many old sash windows are not. Lying still in a cool room is unpleasant after a cold day, and she will appreciate a warm room as much as you do. If the light festival is still running, the page on the light festival walk covers that evening, and the journal post on an afternoon of rain describes a wet day that ended early.