On Friday, November 16th Holland was again the scene for millions of toppling domino stones. Every year there is an attempt to break the world record for the highest number of falling stones with Holland being the winning destination every year since 2001.

Last year I was also here for the big event and in no way was I interested. What fun could there be in watching millions of dominos fall over? However when we flipped through the tv channels and stumbled across the show with underwater domino scenes, bridges, challenges and the biggest designs I had ever seen – I was hooked.

This year I was counting down the days, weeks before the big day. So imagine my disappointment when one after one the displays didn’t work. For those who do not know what I am talking about, see some of the scenes from Domino Day 2006.

Basically when one set of dominos fails to fall or a challenge is not completed then you miss out on that whole section as it isn’t activated, which is what happened over and over again on Friday, November 16th.

All in all the day toppled 3,671, 465 stones but with the 2006 record being 4,079,381 the big record went unbroken and tears were all around. I actually blame Kate Melu who was responsible for knocking down the first stone. Hopefully next year will be better.

Off to set-up some dominoes….

Cloggie In Training

Several months ago RC and I booked tickets to go see Cirque de Soleil’s Euro-touring show Vareki. Usually I see the show each year in London but since the show was going to be in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany as well I thought it would be nice to see it somewhere new.

Amsterdam would have been the most obvious place to see the show but due to RC’s complete dislike of anything Amterdam like (this stems from those in Amsterdam not being very keen on people in Rotterdam and vice versa) that location was vetoed straight away. So we agreed on Antwerp, Belgium with the idea of staying there for the weekend.

So yesterday we set about trying to decide on a hotel to stay in. RC, knowing my love of hotels especially expensive ones, had already broached the idea of a ‘budget’ and ‘picking something normal’ to which I nodded my head and promptly typed in ‘Antwerp’ into Expedia and clicked ’sort by star rating’.

Three hours later we were no closer to agreeing on a hotel. RC just doesn’t appreciate the point of hotels, he won’t even stay in one that is in or near Rotterdam…even if it is super nice. Whereas I could happily book into a hotel every week just to relax and have the Hilton website as one of my favourites.

Eventually we agreed on the Scandic Hotel which I had on my shortlist quite early and after a bit of gentle persuasion was approved, although the idea of booking the suite was not approved as for some reason RC could not see the value in two bedrooms plus living room when there is only two of us.

Off to try and educate RC in the benefits of nice hotels…

Cloggie In Training