Guide · Amsterdam · 2026-10-15
Nuru or body to body on a cold Amsterdam night: gel, oil and a room slow to warm
Nuru and body to body are close relatives. Both are full contact, both are slow and continuous, and guests often waver between them. On a cold night in Amsterdam the choice is less about taste than about the building you are in, because nuru asks a great deal more of a room than body to body does.
What nuru needs from a room
Nuru uses a thick, almost scentless gel that holds water and makes contact slide. In a warm room it is lovely. In a cold one, three things can go wrong. The gel has to be brought up to temperature before it touches skin, or the first contact comes as a shock. A waterproof layer goes over the bed, and it feels cool to lie on until it has warmed. And the session opens and closes with water, usually a shower before and a rinse after, so the bathroom has to be warm and the hot water dependable.
Then there is the bed. The waterproof layer protects the mattress, but a narrow double pushed against a wall leaves less space to work than nuru likes. In a warm room with time in hand that is easily sorted; in a cold one it is one more item on a list that is already long.
None of that is a problem in a modern hotel with a powerful shower. In an old building in deep winter, with a small bathroom against an outside wall, the shower that ought to warm you can turn into the moment you start shivering.
What body to body needs
It uses warmed oil on her own towels laid across the bed. There is nothing to rinse away and nothing to set up beyond the towels. The warmth arrives with the contact, and the format works from both sides of an ordinary double bed. A shower afterwards is up to you and can wait as long as you like.
Choosing on a cold night
If the room is warm and the bathroom good, either works, and the choice really is a matter of taste: nuru for the glide of the gel, body to body for the weight and warmth of oil work. If the room is cool, the bathroom cramped or the hot water unpredictable, body to body is the sensible pick, giving much the same continuous contact with none of the setting up.
Length counts as well. Nuru needs ninety minutes as an honest minimum, because preparing and rinsing take time inside the booking. Oil work is complete in an hour, which suits an evening when the room has only just warmed up.
Telling the thread
Describe the room in the first message: the heating, the bathroom and whether the shower runs hot. That single line shapes the suggestion that comes back. The nuru page and the body to body page go into each format at length, and the warm room note covers the room.