So we woke up in our Caravan Village, and are ready to get our day going! Today is game day! We were originally going to stay another night in Kuwait and arrive this morning, but the threat of missing the game today if anything went wrong was just too big, so here we are!

Depending on where you are in the world, you may think that the games are super early, but not for us in Qatar. Our game doesn’t start until 10 pm! So, let’s go check out FanFest for real this time. Leave the GPS and selfie stick back at our accommodation and let’s head to downtown Doha!

Just our luck… FanFest doesn’t open until 4 pm, so… we’re not just going to stand here and wait. As we told you last night, this metro station is exit only, so we have to walk in some other direction. Yesterday we walked north to see all of the shiny lights and the football stars on the sides of buildings, so today let’s walk south.

Immediately on leaving Corniche station (the one for FanFest) we walked through this lovely scenery only to come out to this HUGE statue.

And then it was on to the Corniche. The oceanside “promenade,” or whatever name you want to give it, that goes along the waterfront in Doha. It had been cut off from car traffic so only pedestrians and designated shuttle busses were allowed to use it. Great! Lots of food, photo ops, and football related things to see and do along it. Here are just a few of the highlights. There weren’t many people here though… maybe because of the time of day? Nothing much seemed to be open. Maybe it’s the same as FanFest that only really starts at 4 pm.

And then, like most cities around the world, the customary signs that you haaaave to get a picture with. We’re starting to get quite a collection of me and these signs.

And we would of course appreciate you noticing that we lined up the Doha skyline to fit exactly into the last frame. As we walked along the Corniche we took many pictures of that skyline, but your head would spin if we showed them all to you. Just remember, that is the section of the city we were in last night when we were looking for all of the World Cup stars.

And then we came to the World Cup “portion” of the Corniche. All of the following signs were one beside the other, and there were a looooot of people trying to get pictures here, of course. We had to wait, and wait, and wait. Everyone would just jump right in to make sure they could get their picture with these memorable signs. A way for them to stamp that they were really here, exact same thing we were doing.

Well… if we put many more pictures together without some text this will turn into Instagram. We kept walking slowly down the Corniche until we finally arrived at the Souq Waqif. If you have been following the World Cup at all, you have definitely heard of this. It is the central market (souq) in Doha. It is a maze of shops where you can get some of everything. We didn’t have much time to explore today, but we will definitely be back. It is quick to get to for us as there is a metro line that drops you off directly beside the souq. As we walked around we just snapped a few pictures and videos. The next one will maybe be familiar to you as many studios have their sets that directly face this end of Souq Waqif, so you have maybe seen this camel. We definitely had, which is why we stopped for the picture.

We just continued taking random paths through the souq as we looked at the different shops and the different tourist attractions. Like this fort. Al-Koot Fort (or Doha Fort) was built in 1880, and that’s all we know without using a search engine. We’re not even sure if you can visit it or not. We didn’t have time to investigate as we had to start heading towards the game! Priorities. Sorry.

Just by the fort is this plaza, which provides a great vantage point to show you from pretty much one side of the souq to the other. The fort/plaza is pretty much the edge of the souq on this side (there is a new gold and carpet souq add on that stretches further than this) and it goes to the Qatar Islamic Cultural Centre, which is the spiral mosque that you can see lit up on the other end. That’s where the Souq Waqif metro station is. Not too far.

But we’re not going to that station, instead we will head into the souq as we get a bit lost, long enough to find this golden thumb (throughout Doha there is A LOT of public art like this)…

… but eventually we do make it to our destination, Msheireb metro station. Souq Waqif was a closer station, but we would have had to change lines at Msheireb station anyway, so might as well just walk and enter directly. As I am sure you have realized by now, my partner is not against walking, even to his own detriment, hehe.

It’s still about 3 or 4 hours before the game, Argentina vs Croatia (!!!), so it’s not too busy, perfect for us to make it there quickly without any issues. And just a quick metro ride later, we’re there! So excited! What many people, especially in the media, have criticized about the tournament being in such a small country has actually been a positive for the people who actually attended the games. When we attended games of Copa América Centenario it was not very convenient to get to and from the games using public transport. But anyyyyway… look at this!

Quite the welcome. It literally looks like it is made of gold! Welcome to Lusail Stadium! SO EXCITED!

Since we got here so early we got through security quickly and had plenty of time to look around at the different fanzone offerings. And of course take pictures with the stadium from every conceivable angle. But, the most important thing in this situation is to determine who’s side you will be on. We clearly have/had our favourite, who did you have?

Then it was off to find our seats. No idea how my travel partner managed to get seats so high in the stadium to be honest.. but still great! High enough to clearly see everything, and it’s a World Cup game and we’re in the stadium. No complaints!

We waited a little bit in our seats, probably 30 or 40 minutes, not much since we walked around the stadium outside and then as much as we were allowed inside just soaking everything in. And then it was time!!!

We put away the cameras as much as we could, but we did still record some of the game and atmosphere. Eventually it will see the light of day on the YouTube channel, eventually. But, as you likely know if you are any sort of fan of the Beautiful Game, Argentina won. We went as close as we were allowed to the main Argentinian supporters section who were still singing full force 40 minutes after the game had ended. And remember, again, this game started at 10 pm, which means that we are now celebrating into the next day at this point! But it’s worth it!

Eventually we were marshalled outside and towards the metro. “Metro! This way!” all over the place. They made us take the long way back, probably trying to control the crowds as a vast majority of us were going to take the metro back into Doha. Instead of quickly entering the metro station we got to take more pictures with the stadium and different things that were happening around the stadium after the game.

And with that, our time at this stadium was done. Now it was just waiting in this looooong line to get into the metro station to eventually get back to our Caravan City accommodations so that we could go to sleep close to 3 am so that we can wake up tomorrow morning and do it all over again with the second semi final! Good night from Doha! Grande Argentina!