Well the football may have been crap but b***** it we became an auntie and uncle once again! Yes, massive congratulations to my brother and his wife Marissa who gave birth to a beautiful baby girl called Edie Iris. We cannot wait to meet her!!!

Well it was also a good job Brazil was class because the football script didn't exactly go to plan. We first had a week soaking up the atmosphere in the quite brilliant Rio de Janeiro with its famous beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema as well as it's quite stupendous Christ the Redeemer statue that looks out over the whole of Rio and lights up brightly in the night sky. We then watched Brazil kick off the tournament with a win and then watched the whole city go crazy in celebration a few days before being brought back down to earth watching England start their losing campaign with a loss to Italy. Next was São Paulo which is basically a humongous concrete jungle but was quite memorable for the fact that 2 mates turned up unbeknown to me in the form of Spenno and Gezzy (although I had a little inkling!!). Our hopes remained high thinking we would beat Uruguay as we even ventured to the stadium trying to get tickets but couldn't bring ourselves to pay the stupid prices that the touts wanted. Turned out it was a good decision as we all now know what happened next, that bloody cannibal, Luis fecking Suarez!! However, the day wasn't all bad as I got a pic with the legend himself, Chris Kammy Kamara, and we also partied in the streets of Vila Madelena, the craziest place in SP.

Spirits however, did sink even lower when Italy lost to Costa Rica meaning once again the 3 lions were going home. It was fair to say we left SP a bit down hearted but had to simply give ourselves a pep talk in the form of 'F it, we're in Brazil after all!' So we moved to England's last meaningless game in Belo Horizonte where we did have tickets for and to be fair experienced our best England atmos the night before the game as a large group of England fans including us fired out chants of '10 German Bombers', quickly followed up with 'We're s**t and we know we are' and then last but not least 'we're going home, we're going home, we're going, England's going home', at least nobody quite does irony like us Brits!!

We then returned to Rio determined to live it large and did so duly as Brazil beat Chile on penalties which kick started the massive party atmosphere in Rio and in particular Copacabana beach. The Brazilians really really do love their football and we're just thankful we got to share the experience with them; me and Gezzy would also like to think that we showed the Brazilians a thing or two with the football, playing keepy uppy but this actually turned into mostly keepy downy to a point we just passed it along the floor!! However, we also got to drink in the area of Urca to watch the sun go down on the simply tremendous and possibly the most beautiful city in the world.

Our travels then came to and end in the extremely busy city of Buenos Aires, Argentina where I couldn't stop singing that damn Evita song - 'Don't cry for me Argentina...' which was much to Stacey's annoyance (apparently I'm no Madonna!)

This blog is therefore being written on the plane home but we have absolutely no complaints whatsoever. After all we've had the time of our lives but you know what they say, home sweet home and we're looking forward to it and seeing everyone, although I'm not really sure I can say the same about work! Maybe it's time to start saving again.......