Our last game

We flew south from St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea to Samara on the Volga River (which eventually empties into the Caspian Sea). We are quite close to the border with Kazakhstan. It has been sunny and quite warm (about 28 degrees) although today there was a thunder and lightening storm after we returned to the hotel.
Samara was for years a "closed" city because of the defense industries and space race. Vostok rockets were built and launched in Samara and Yuri Gagarin did his first flights here. Samara was opened up about 30 years ago, at the end of the soviet era.We thought it might be interesting to see from that point of view and there was a quarter final game scheduled here too.

Samara in Russian spelling is Camapa

Hotel Moya

Hotels on the Russian leg of the trip have been all quite different although the staff have been friendly and helpful everywhere. We started at  the Moscow Holiday Inn Express which was new and modern, with little unnecessary decoration. Our garret at the St Petersburg hotel was probably 200 years old.

The Hotel Moya here in Samara was built in the 1960s. The decoration is extremely elaborate and esoteric - from stuffed wild animals to shiny gold embossed wallpaper. This was probably a farming area but there is now a giant IKEA anchoring a giant mall just up the hill.  There are huge low rise apartment blocks supplying the young families to shop at the mall.We took a trip into town today on the bus and trolley and it took over an hour.

Most of the animals are ornamental now

Our bathroom window

The shuttle buses to the stadium for the England vs Sweden game left from the mall parking lot. We got there early but it was ok because we got to see these lovely dancers and musicians. And then there was the sock incident.

At the previous FIFA games we have attended there was a special tent for storing things that they don't allow in the stadium such as umbrellas that are too long, bags that are too big, food and water etc. The queues after the games were long to reclaim these items. We had bought an outfit for Avery and 4 pairs of socks at the mall.  We didn't want to have to wait in the reclaim queue because the Russia vs Croatia game was on after our game. We got the bright idea to put the outfit at the bottom of Laurie's bag and stuff the socks in his jacket pocket. At a security check point they scan your FIFA pass and your ticket, put your bags through an airport-type scanner and you get searched as well as metal detected. I went through a different security check point to Laurie and couldn't figure out why he was taking so long. It turns out the security staff were quite concerned about the 4 pairs of non-FIFA ladies' socks that Laurie had stashed on his person. He had to do some quick talking about his wife and shopping. They let him through but we had a good laugh.

Laurie with offending socks outside Samara Arena