Brazil 2014 - Day 9 (6/21/2014) - Nigeria vs Bosnia

Cuiabá is not terribly appealing from a tourist perspective, so I wasn't too sad to be spending only about 1.5 days there.  We took it super easy this morning, getting up around 9 for breakfast at the hotel (which was the weakest thus far, but not bad) before returning to the room to lie around lazily for a while.  We eventually showered and prepared to leave.

We walked down the street to Sorvetelle, a restaurant that got good ratings on Trip Advisor for its ice cream.  Raj ordered a milkshake while I made a sundae, and we watched the 1 PM match.  After the match, Raj and I decided to walk around the town for a while.  We wandered past a few spots that we had noted in tourist maps and Trip Advisor, including the supposed geodetic center of South America and Igreça Nossa Senhora do Bom Despacho.  We then tried to go to a pizzeria that Raj had read about, but it was closed.  So we instead walked back to Sorvetelle for the Germany vs Ghana match.  This time we ordered real food - a personal sized pizza for each of us.  We only stayed partway through the second half, as we wanted to get to the stadium early for our match.

There was special signage at a couple of nearby bus stops for buses going to Arena Pantanal.  We went to one of these bus stops and hopped on a bus with stadium signage (along with a few other guys who had also been at the restaurant).  The area around the stadium had been blocked off, so the stadium stop was still a ways from the stadium itself.  Things seemed fairly well organized, though, and we had no problems walking to the stadium.  We were through security much earlier than the last match, and had about 45 minutes to kill before kick-off.  The match turned out to be a nail-biter, with Nigeria obviously stalling to hold on to a slim 1-0 victory.  After the match, we couldn't quite figure out which bus would take us back toward our hotel, or where to catch it, so we instead walked all the way back.  We also stopped briefly at SESC Arsenal to check out the popular local hangout.  We made it a pretty early night, as we had a very early start the next day.