June 21-22
After a long bus ride from Tallinn, we arrived in St. Petersburg! World Cup!!!
Super low rise boats:
We got settled in, went grocery shopping and Michael cooked dinner while we waited for some friends to arrive to the Airbnb. We were being joined by Jacob, a friend from Chicago, and his college buddy, Andy, who lives in NY.
It was pretty late by the time Andy and Jacob arrived, so we had dinner, caught up and then went to bed. Wild and crazy times in Mother Russia!!
The next morning, Michael and I grabbed some runs before heading to our first of two World Cup games – Brazil verses Costa Rica!
The city was decked out in soccer decorations.
But the real show was the fans:
https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/img_0999.mov
The energy in the stadium was amazing! Everyone was just super excited to be there… including us!
The game was great. We were in a section that was pretty heavy Brazil, but there were some Ticos as well. It was a long and super stressful game. We were rooting for Brazil and were hoping to see Neymar score a goal. It was a long, scoreless game. Finally, Brazil scored a goal in the first minute of stoppage time, by Philippe Coutinho. Then Brazil got another goal in the seventh minute of stoppage – this goal was by Neymar in a penalty shot. We were jacked about it – despite the fact that everyone who saw it on television said it shouldn’t have been a penalty. From where we were sitting, you couldn’t really tell, so we were just excited for the Neymar goal.
After the game finished, as we went to leave the stadium, a strange thing happened. I think they were worried about crowd control, so they didn’t let us out of our seats for 10 minutes. This guy’s job was to block us in until his timer on his phone ran down. It was very strange.
That night, we met back up with Andy and Jacob who didn’t have tickets to the game, and hit the town. We went to a couple of bars before ending up at Poison – a karaoke bar. Awesome.
The bar was filled with Russians (no tourists except for us) but the songs were exclusively in English.
Some of the better performances? A woman who sang The Phantom of the Opera and this guy:
https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/img_2862.trim_.movSome of the lesser appreciated performances? Jacob singing Kid Rock “I’m a Cowboy” and my rendition of Mercedes Benz. It was such a hit in Kraków… not so much here.
So here’s the thing about Russia. At 3 in the morning, it’s still light outside. So when we walked out, it could have been 9:30 or 10 at night. It wasn’t. The energy was still good in the city – lots of people out and about. But it was way past our bedtime. Amazing night, but time for bed!
