Journal · 2026-06-06
Morning Light After an Overnight Flight: Curtains or Sun
After an overnight flight the question at eight in the morning is whether to shut the curtains or open them. How that choice shapes the day and the session.
A traveller walking into a room near the airport at eight in the morning after an overnight flight faces a small decision with large consequences. The curtains can be drawn and the day postponed, or they can be pulled wide and the day accepted. Both choices have their defenders, and each changes when a session fits.
The case for drawing the curtains
Some travellers land after a flight in which they barely slept, and the body simply demands rest. For them, darkening the room, showering and lying down is the only realistic plan. A session in this state works well if it comes first: an hour at nine, a shower, then a nap of no more than ninety minutes with the curtains drawn. The session loosens the body that has been folded into a seat all night, and the nap that follows is deeper for it. The key is to keep the nap short and open the curtains afterwards.
The case for opening them
Others prefer to stay awake until local night, on the grounds that the body clock adjusts faster when it is kept in daylight. For them, the curtains go wide on arrival, and the morning is spent outside or near a window. A session in this plan belongs to the late afternoon or early evening, when it closes the first day and leads naturally into an early night. The red-eye arrival page covers both approaches.
Which one suits you
Direction matters. Travellers from North America land after a flight that has taken them into what the body regards as the small hours. They often need the rest, and the curtained morning works well for them. Travellers from further east land with a clock that is running ahead and reaches its low point in the local afternoon; for them the sunlit morning and an evening session tend to work better.
Length of stay matters too. A traveller staying only two days may not bother adjusting at all, and simply sleeps when tired. A traveller staying a week has more reason to push the clock into local time from the first morning.
Light as medicine
Daylight in the morning is the clearest single signal the body clock receives. Even on an overcast Amsterdam morning, the light outdoors is many times brighter than the light in a hotel room. Twenty minutes outside between nine and eleven does more for jet lag than any amount of coffee. If the morning session plan is chosen, that walk belongs after the nap; if the evening plan is chosen, it belongs in the first hour after landing.
What the room needs, either way
For a morning session the room should be warm and dim, even if the curtains will be opened later. Aircraft cabins are cool and dry, and a traveller who has just come off one feels cold easily. For an evening session, the room should be tidy and the day's clothes put away, because by then the traveller is tired in a different way and small clutter becomes irritating.
Arranging it from the aircraft
Either plan runs smoothly when it is arranged before boarding. The thread needs the scheduled landing, the area of the hotel, whether the room will be available on arrival and the preferred length and time. The journey time is agreed first, half the fee is confirmed in advance because the room is at the airport, and the start is then fixed. If the plan changes after landing, while she has not set out, the start can move with it.
If you are not sure which plan you are
Some travellers cannot tell on the aircraft how they will feel on landing. In that case, say so in the thread and ask for a provisional start at either end of the day. A morning slot can be confirmed from the arrivals hall once you know how the flight went, and an evening one from the room after lunch. Either way the journey time is agreed before the start is fixed.
Figures
The morning costs exactly what the evening costs. None of the rates listed for each woman bends for an early start. The booking page sets out the order of the messages.
What the choice does not touch
Curtains open or closed, morning or evening, the session itself is shaped by your therapist. She explains what it includes and where her limits are before anything begins. Anyone present has to be twenty-one or over.
So on the next overnight flight into Schiphol, decide before landing which kind of morning you want. The rest of the day follows from that one choice.