Breathtaking building.

Support CONCACAF. They deserved better – dominated Belgium. Too bad.

The main market. If you’ve seen a shuk (market) in Israel or any other Arab country: well it’s nothing like that.

However, if you’ve been to EPCOT then you have a pretty good idea what this is, just larger: everything is brand new but built to look a bit old. It’s all giant fancy stores, boutiques, art dealerships, and restaurants. It’s very nice though. The day we went it was still empty – like everything – but that’s because the Brazilians were just about to arrive.

Little wooden boats that were historically used in Qatar for pearl fishing. In our case, it was a two hour trip for seeing yachts owed by monarchs and eat really good food.

Like with most other things in here so far, there were more workers than tourists and no beer. But the food was excellent and it was a really nice and relaxing experience.

A 0-0 tie in which Mexico was better and deserved to win. This is a terrible result when combined with Argentina’s loss to Saudi Arabia.

The match was held at the 974 Stadium, built using 974 shipping containers and will allegedly be disassembled and reassembled in another country. Mark my words: it won’t happen. It’s a very nice stadium though.

Fresh(er) after a quick nap, we headed out to Al Thumama Stadium to watch Netherlands vs Senegal and then USA vs Wales. If this sounds crazy, that’s because it is. Originally we had plenty of time between both games but things got rescheduled after we purchased the tickets leaving us very little time to go from one game to the next.

This was a good match. Unlike past World Cups where I’ve seen Netherlands play, there were few Clockwork Orange fans and they were oddly subdued. There were lots of Mexican fans though. In a sad twist of irony, we had to leave a bit early while the score was 0-0 so we can catch the USA vs Wales game.

Netherlands won 2-0. 🤷

The telescope launched this morning and didn’t explode. Only took an eternity. Hope it unfurls successfully. I saw the replica en 2013, the photo deserves a repost.