Guide · Amsterdam · 2026-10-15
Body to body in Amsterdam after a four seasons day: sun, hail, wind and rain by teatime
Locals have a name for the restless spring weather that fits sunshine, a hail shower, a gust strong enough to stop a bicycle and a burst of rain into one afternoon. Visitors tend to call it something less polite. A body to body evening is a fine way to close a day like that, and booking it well comes down mainly to timing and to the state you come back in.
What a four seasons day is like on foot
It turns up mainly in March and April, though May can manage it as well. The sky is bright and piled with tall cloud, and every so often one of those clouds empties. A shower of hail or cold rain passes over in a few moments, the sun comes back, and the wind dries the pavement before the next one lands. Anyone sightseeing spends the day taking a jacket off and putting it on again, sheltering in doorways and being caught out between them.
By evening the result is an odd sort of tiredness: chilled at the edges, slightly wind-burned, and damp in patches rather than soaked. None of it is dramatic weather, yet a full day of it leaves the body tight in a way that a steady drizzle does not.
Booking body to body around changeable weather
The arrival window is forty to sixty minutes from the confirmed hour, whatever the last shower did. Because the sky turns so quickly, there is no reason to wait for a dry spell before writing; the thread does not mind whether it is hailing when you hit send.
Spring is also when the city fills. Tulip season and the long light evenings bring visitors in, and rooms that were easy to find in February are taken early by April. Writing the same afternoon instead of at nine in the evening is the simple way round that. The spring page goes into the busier calendar at length.
On a day like this the first message only needs the usual five lines. If your room has a radiator that has been switched off for the season, say so, because a spring evening can still turn cold after the sun drops.
Which length suits the end of the day
An hour of body to body is a complete session and fits an evening when dinner still has to happen. Ninety minutes suits a guest who came in chilled, since the opening stretch goes to warming up. If you have walked since breakfast and plan nothing afterwards, two hours give the evening a slower shape. The duration ladder sets out how the lengths step up.
Getting ready in the arrival window
Hang anything wet where it can dry, over a radiator or in the bathroom. Swap damp socks for dry ones. Then do very little: a hot drink and a quiet room will set the hour up better than a rush to tidy. She brings warmed oil and her own towels, and the format page describes how the session opens.