This was my first college football game and it was amazing to see how many people turn up to watch it, considering that the World Series in baseball was on as well with the San Francisco Giants playing the Kansas City Royals on the same night. I was surprised at the move for the football games from Candlestick Park to the new Levi’s Stadium since it WAS in San Francisco and now its in Santa Clara. It took about 2 hours to get there from my hostel which was in town. Worst part being leaving at 11 pm and getting back at 1 am. I equate that to moving a home game in Sydney from Allianz Stadium or ANZ Stadium to Wollongong (although it does take forever to get home from ANZ already =) ). The stadium was amazingly hi tech as well (well from what I could tell). The screens were crystal clear, and the seats were like leather couches.
“Go Bears” is all I kept hearing all night even though they lost 59-41. I had ticketing issues with Groupon which meant that I ended up paying nearly full price for the tickets. I bought a ticket for the C219 section (which is normally over $200) for $100 offGroupon. This is also in the Levi’s 501 private section where there are separate bars and food outlets to the “normal” people. The issue was that I tried to buy a ticket off Groupon, and it was declined, and I assumed it had to do with my credit card not being valid for US purchases (I bought it when I was in Sydney). I then had a friend send it to me as a gift, and it had gone through). Later that day I found out my credit card had been blocked as a security thing. It was subsequently unblocked, but Groupon kept trying the card. It went through at 1 am that night and I was only given 2-3 hours to “cancel”. Clearly I wasn’t able to cancel and so I wasn’t able to get a refund or a credit, so I ended up with 2 tickets to the game! I tried to sell it, but hostel people seem to be poor, who would’ve guessed.
Oh, the marching bands were amazing. We should totally do that back in Sydney.
Oh, and delicious garlic fries and a cheeseburger (I’m enjoying the food on this trip) =)
