Laura, high energy company in De Pijp

Laura has the energy of somebody who came off a mountain this morning and the patience of somebody who could sit through a four hour dinner without once checking the time. Both are true of her, and the combination is far rarer than it sounds. Guests tend to notice the first within a minute and the second somewhere around the main course, which is when they usually relax.

She is 25 and 169 centimetres, athletic, with long sun-kissed light brown hair and green eyes. The fitness comes from horses and snow rather than from a gym: she rides whenever she can get out of the city, and she skis every winter with the seriousness of a person who grew up doing it. Her clothes lean toward breezy garden party elegance, light fabrics and easy shapes that travel well.

The warmth is the other half of her. She is genuinely interested in people, asks better questions than most, and has the traveller's useful habit of turning a delay into a story worth telling. Italy is her weakness, the food, the coast, and the language she keeps threatening to learn properly one of these years. Bianka cooks the food Laura flies for, which both of them find funnier than it actually is.

Her home district is De Pijp, a few minutes from the market and a short hop to the centre or out along the ring road toward the airport. An evening with Laura moves. She is not the right company for a silent dinner and long meaningful pauses; she is the one who suggests one more place at half past eleven and turns out to be right about it. Say yes. That is the general advice from everybody who has spent a night in her company and gone home later than intended.

Give Laura an evening with somewhere to go afterwards and she makes the whole thing look easy. Dinner first, Italian if there is a decent one near your hotel, because Italy is the weakness she has never bothered hiding, along with a language she means to learn properly one year.

She asks better questions than most people and turns a missed connection into something worth retelling, so the first hour goes quickly. Then the part she is genuinely good at, which is a second address near midnight, chosen on instinct and almost always correct. A bar, a terrace, a walk along the Amstel with the wind doing what the Dutch wind does. She was on a mountain at some point this year and has the energy to prove it, and nobody has yet regretted saying yes to the detour.