Game Day...

We awoke to rain. Heavy rain. Moscow had turned from a sunny welcome to a cold and dreary place which may have been good timing for the concerns over two groups of English fans arriving that day, with each supporting either Red or Blue.

The city was on alert and traffic was backed up in the center of town with Moscow's normal overuse of city streets by mechanized surface transport. It took ours almost an hour to get around Red Square from the Marriott Grand to GQ, the restaurant where our friends from ESPN were hosting a lunch and had graciously invited us to join them.

On our arrival day, Mary Lynn, Italo and I snuck away to the Vogue Cafe, another one of Moscow's stylish posh places to be seen with an equally exquisite menu. Despite the distraction of the model types at the adjacent table, we really liked revisiting this discovery from 2006. GQ, was also the chic club at late night and restaurant through the day and evening. A good choice by ESPN which brought us together with their heads of programming acquisition for TV, Radio, Deportes and almost everyone we have been dealing with from Bristol and Manhattan.

After a short nap back at the hotel, knowing that at best we would see the latest finish to a Champions League final in UEFA history, the jet lag notwithstanding, we managed to catch a few zzzzz's until it was time to head to Luzhniki Stadium.

The ride to the stadium went faster than anticipated and when we got to the hospitality center, we were clearly early but that gave us a good opportunity to get settled. It would be hours until the game would start. Until then it would be talk, chatter, speculation and a lot of just waiting for what everyone was there for... the Game.