Monte Casino...in Africa?

---

We've just got back from an evening at Monte Casino...in the middle of Johannesburg! Monte Casion is a shopping and casino centre based on Monte Casino in Italy and is incredible! It houses a big range of shops, a great range of restaurants, and a bloody big seat to watch all the World Cup action on!!

So the las time we spoke I was regalling tales of our trip getting here! Well the first day after a big sleep was tops! We got a chance to get ourselves outside and do some shopping and have a bit of a kick around. David and Barbara (ours hosts in JBurg) have been incredible! They've chauffered us around a bunch of different shopping areas and given us the chance to get to know the place and see the sights and sounds!

Of the shopping we've done we've seen a HUGE variety of different bits and pieces! From road side sellers, to whole sale super markets, and Levi outlet stores, the shoppings been good! Aside from the shopping we've been getting in some fantastic time by the pool. Whether it be some football juggling, or some slips catching practice by skimming a bouncy ball over the pool we've been having a ball!

A rather interesting experience was picking up the tickets. Right off the bat I want to make it clear than all 3 of us are thorougly dissapointed with Fifa and their ticketing processes. Their website has been a sham, and when we turned up at 9am to pick our tickets we joined the nearest line. Sure enough after an hour we hadn't moved, yet the other line had. We found ourselves sorrounded by fellow foreigners waiting to collect their tickets, and frustration was begining to grow. Eventually Steve went and had a word with the organisers and in typical Fifa fashion their two lines were split into ticket purchasers and ticket collectors. The line we were in halved as we all relocated to the second line. 45 minutes later we were finally in with a grin to pick the tickets up! A bloody long saga which required a lot of effort on the part of the consumer, customer service doesn't seem to be a high priority for Fifa, but in the rest of SA it's been good!

We're about to head up to Pilansberg for 4 nights to go see some game, sun city, and NZ's opening group match. However we've left a couple of video messages for you all, just watch some German TV or ESPN Asia and we'll no doubt be headlining their news bulletins!!!

Rich, Steve, and Tricky (Chris)

---