It’s been almost a week since we arrived in Rio for the 2014 World Cup and I promised Teresa (Marketing) that I would do her a weekly blog, so here goes.

First the weather (Brits always talk about the weather, it comes from having crap weather all your life!) It’s been beautiful ever since we got here. The daily high is approx. 85 degrees, although it does get a little cool in the evenings.

The sunny weather has allowed us to get out loads and go to the beach. The beach in Rio is the center of all life, or at least it seems that way. I took a run along the beach front this morning and even at 7:30 am the place is buzzing! There are hundreds of beach volleyball courts and beach soccer pitches set up everywhere on the sand. In the mornings, the beach is full of people doing their workouts in the sand. Rio appears to be a very fit, outdoors kind of City.

We have already been to a couple of games – Belgium vs Russia & Ecuador vs France – both at the Maracana. The Maracana is awesome! A huge bowl of a stadium that holds 78,000. It has been completely refurbished for the World Cup and their doesn't appear to be any bad seats. There is tons of security around the stadiums, we must have had our tickets checked at least 10 times before even getting into the Maracana and no signs of any protests.

Inside the stadium the atmosphere has been fantastic for both games. Especially the French game, where the Les Bleu fans made themselves heard! The fans in general have been great and one of the best parts of a World Cup is meeting fans from all around the world. Soccer unites and divides people like no other sport and the World Cup is a place of unity right now. Fans from everywhere coming together to enjoy the games and have fun. Outside of the fact Brazil are obviously at “home” and there are Brazil fans everywhere, I would have to say that Colombia appears to have brought the most fans, their distinctive yellow shirts all over Rio.

The Brazilian people have been very friendly and helpful, and although there isn’t too much English spoken we have managed to make ourselves understood with a mixture of English – Spanish and the odd French word thrown in! Not quite sure why we used French but we did and seemed to get away with it. We ordered the most amazing steak dinner the other evening, that our daughters Nikki and Emily were still raving about the next day.

We watched the US game yesterday at a bar (shocker) with a group of Orlando City fans. Delighted that the US team got through the “Group of Death”, it’s quite an achievement. I fancy us to beat Belgium; in the game we saw the Belgians didn't look too hot, so fingers crossed for Tuesday. Orlando City has quite a few fans down here and have hooked up with some of them already. Even bumped into two season ticket holders in the lobby of a hotel yesterday. They had just bought 2015 MLS Season Tickets before they left for Rio. Everyone is walking around in either their club jerseys or their country jerseys, so spotting USA/Orlando fans is relatively straightforward.

Rest day today – hence the blog, and then back to the Maracana tomorrow for what should be a “belter”….. Uruguay v Colombia. Vamos Colombia!!!!

Phil