Rio Olympics Blog — Day Twenty-one: Visiting the ‘mega store’

So for what feels like the first time in quite a while, I found myself with anything to do in the morning on Thursday. I didn’t have a website shift until the afternoon and I didn’t need to go anywhere for a newspaper assignment. So I ended up sleeping in and then going to the Olympic “mega store” inside of Olympic Park to do some souvenir shopping.

The store is a massive example of don’t judge a book by its cover, and not in a good way. While it looks massive on the outside, inside it’s all very much meh. There’s really not a great selection of items to pick from and a lot of the items seemed like they were afterthoughts for the manufacturer.

For example, there were hats and shirts for each country, but they all seemed so uninspired. The hats were literally all the same, except for the flag on the front of the hat and the color of the hat. The shirts were the same; different colors and obviously the name changed, but those were literally the only differences. I’m not sure who made them, but they made the current U.S. soccer kits look amazing, and that’s no small task.

That aside, I managed to get everything I needed in less than 15 minutes inside the story. I then headed back to the press center for my afternoon website shift which was unremarkable.

Friday will be another chill day of sorts. I have a website shift in the morning with the afternoon off, which I plan to use to do research for a story I’m working on over Brazilian men’s soccer and their quest for gold.

Miles walked today: 7.2

Total miles walked: 127.34

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