drowning

He has been whispering to me for a year. The Akasha Spa of the Amsterdam Conservatorium Hotel. When I descended to the restrooms for a lunch appointment, I was almost tempted to skip lunch and visit the spa. But duty called. You understand that,

It had to be Friday. Because it never works out, Friday was marked with a cross in the calendars and I went with two dear friends to this place. Because we really needed a bit of warmth, comfort, and relaxation. Okay, we are honest, so I’ll tell you that we found parking at the hotel quite expensive. Thirty euros for the first two hours and then €7.50 per hour. Parking in the PC is much cheaper and more inspiring.

Now to the spa. It is intimate and luxurious. Think large bathrobes with matching slippers and intensely thick towels. Nuts, dried fruits, and mint water all over the place. We first walked past the sauna, hammam (there is also a private hammam but we discreetly skipped that) and dove into the jacuzzi. Swimming was intensely cold afterwards so we looked for a middle phase. We found a beautiful little pool with a water feature. But that turned out to be for people who need to recover. Now we needed that too, really, but we couldn’t convince the ‘lady of the baths’. So we moved from comfortable couches to the pool via the jacuzzi to the hammam. Then showered in the intensely wonderful shower room with all the amenities one could need (delightful foam, shampoo, conditioner, extra towels, cotton swabs, hairdryers, and more. Everything was rounded off with a lunch in the hotel’s armchairs. A glass of champagne, prawns with red pepper, a bag of fries, and a hand and a smile from Matthijs van Nieuwkerk and Youp van ’t Hek and we were suddenly very close to being happy.