Happy Birthday, Big Bro!!!

Happy birthday to my big brother!!!!!

Fan Zones

(PICTURE: The fan zone where we watched the France vs. Uraguay game.)

For those of you who were hoping for a blog about the USA vs. England game, I'm sorry to disappoint. Hopefully the USA won the game and I'll have a good blog to write about it soon. However, I'm prewriting this blog because we won't be returning from the game until probably 1 or 2AM. We're then taking off for Cape Town around 6AM to check out that city and to catch the Italy vs. Paraguay game.

Sooooo, this blog is about the Fan Zones. Throughout the country there are "fan zones" set up. As I mentioned yesterday, we watched the opening game at one of these zones. Basically they are public spaces which have resurrected huge TVs.

The cool thing about the zones is that you get to feel the electricity of the games without having to be in the stadium. On top of that, there are musical acts and entertainment between the games.

A funny little anecdote: We wanted to watch the first game at a fan zone so we headed to Melrose Arch, a promenade turned zone about twenty minutes from our hotel. We got to the zone about four hours early and managed to grab a table at a restaurant about thirty feet from the screen. The zone filled up and had probably a few thousand people finagling for a clear view to the screen. The zone was cool but I had expected something much bigger akin to the fan zones in Germany in 2006. Well, there was a zone much bigger and it was a two minute walk from where we were. We inadvertantly set-up shop in the smaller of the two fan zones at Melrose Arch. For the second game we headed over to the other zone which was much livelier.

Okay, I'm gonna grab breakfast, shower and then head out to the USA game. LETS GO USA!!!!