Accommodation Done: World Cup 2018 Russia
Since the last post we have nailed down our accommodation for Russia 2018, well at least I hope we have…?
As with the last World Cup in Brazil, I have been looking at
AirBnB as the primary resource for accommodation in Russia, mainly because it’s
more economical than hotels and apartments, and there is a better choice &
selection available. The trouble with trying to book something this far out
from next year’s competition, is that many owners have not considered their
pricing for 2018, and the closer we get the more expensive it can become, plus
there is more incentive for owners to "Bump" reservations and put
their prices up. I guess this has always been a potential problem for us when
booking non-hotel type accommodation, but we have just been lucky so far...
The more I thought about trying to shoe-horn in a week or 2
in Finland, or even base ourselves there for the early stages of the World Cup,
the more of a logistical problem it became. With 4 games in St. Petersburg and 3
of them being evening games, meant that travelling back to Finland after the
games would mean some late nights, or even having to find somewhere to stay for
the evening. In the end I decided that it would be easier to get a long term
rental on an apartment for almost 3 weeks in St. Petersburg and base ourselves
there.
With this in mind, I started to look at splitting our time
between St. Petersburg & Moscow and drew up a shortlist of suitable AirBnB accommodation
for a potential group of up to 8 people in each location, and reached out to a
small handful of places to see if we can get the accommodation locked down. As
a backup, I also took a look at hotel type apartments that are less likely to
"bump" our reservation once booked, and it allowed us the flexibility
to book a different size hotel rooms to accommodate additional people that may
want to join us in Russia. I shared the shortlist of about 6 potential AirBnB
places with Yates and we came up with our favourites and I started the booking
process.
Within a period of about 2 weeks at the end of May, I
managed to book an 8 people apartment in the heart of St. Petersburg for 22
days, (7th June to 29th June), and a similar sized
apartment in central Moscow for 20 days, (29th June to 19th
July). Both apartments were within our proposed budget and give us flexibility
in terms of accommodating various combination of potential guests during our
time in Russia. Additionally, both apartments are within easy walking distance
to the centre of each city, and well located for public transport for getting
to the various stadiums, and I have my fingers-crossed that when the Fan-Zones
are announced that we will be pretty close to those as well. RESULT…!!
So now that the accommodation is sorted, time to starting
thinking about the next hurdle to overcome, ticketing. There is still no new
information coming out of FIFA about tickets, but with the Confederations Cup now
underway, but I am expecting that we will get more news in the next month or
so. However, we can now be a bit more specific about the 8 matches we will be targeting
for tickets:
St.Petersburg
& Moscow
|
||||
Match
|
Location
|
Time
|
Teams
|
CAT2 $
|
M4
|
St. Petersburg
|
18.00
|
B3vB4
|
$
165
|
M17
|
St. Petersburg
|
21.00
|
RUSvA3
|
$
165
|
M25
|
St. Petersburg
|
15.00
|
E1vE3
|
$
165
|
M39
|
St. Petersburg
|
21.00
|
D4vD1
|
$
165
|
M51
|
Moscow Luzhniki
|
17.00
|
1Bv2A
|
$
185
|
M56
|
Moscow Spartak
|
21.00
|
1Hv2G
|
$
185
|
M62
|
Moscow Luzhniki
|
21.00
|
W59vW60
|
$
480
|
M64
|
Moscow Luzhniki
|
18.00
|
W61vW62
|
$
710
|
Cost
per person (US$)
|
$
2,220
|
|||
If my memory is
correct regarding previous World Cups, we could only buy a max of 7 sets of
tickets per person, which may be a problems as we want to 8 matches. This could
be further compounded by the additional identity authentication process with
FAN-ID, making it significantly more risky trying to buy tickets in the name of
someone not attending the matches. I have a few cunning strategies up my
sleeve, but until more information is announced, there is no point in worrying
about it…
In other news, as is our tradition, Fiona and I have
booked our pre-World Cup Trip, where we go somewhere as part of our travel to
the World Cup host country. In previous years we have indulged our love of
travel and spent a couple of weeks in Tunisia, Namibia, and Chile, all of which
have a decidedly ‘desert’ ambiance to them. So in order to continue the theme,
for 2018 we are going to head to Alice Springs in mid-May, and spend 2 weeks
driving an RV to Sydney through the ‘Red Centre’, stopping off to see Uluru and
some other sights on the way. This is an adventure that Fiona and I have always
wanted and now is as good a time as any..! On the way back from the World Cup this time,
our plan is to first head to Barcelona for a week to celebrate Fiona’s 50th Birthday, and then stop off somewhere
in either Asia or South America, depending on which way round the world our flights
take, on our way back to Christchurch.
As you can imagine, excitement is beginning to build.
