Not a busy day but still a long one.

Monday 18th June

Donetsk

The headboard banging against the wall to the accompaniment of squeals of delight was again the lullaby sound track that Tiffany tried, without success, to fall asleep to.

These lounge areas are on each floor of the hotel..

..A lady doing a bit of reading and chatting on the internet in one of  them

It was good then that this morning was a very easy one for us at the Donbass Arena Stadium.

All that we had to do was one easy live broadcast into the sports section of Daybreak.

Standing by to go on air from the Donbass Arena

Tiffany having a quick rehearsal

Rav doing his thing with the reflector 

The good news was that during breakfast, which we ate at different hotel, it looked like the lovely Emily our producer back in London had managed to sort out another hotel for us.

Then the day got quite busy with changing hotels, doing some filming and organising our live broadcasts for tomorrow morning. It would be a much busier day because it would be match day.

We needed to get some vox pops with Ukrainian fans to put into out little preview report. Surprisingly this proved a little more problematic that we had anticipated but, we did it.

The thought was that we would have nothing better to do than go the the Donetsk Fan Zone and get the interviews and atmospheric shots just like Kiev.

It worked in Kiev because the Fan Zone takes up most of the centre of the city and is difficult to avoid.

The one in Donetsk is a bit out of he main part of the city and not so easy to find.

However, there were enough willing Ukrainians for interview purposes if not for shots of throngs of exuberant fans.

Not quite as busy or exciting as Kiev

Maria and Tiffany in the deserted Donetsk Fan Zone

As well as making calls to organise transport, guests and check that we could do what we wanted to do where we wanted to do it, thanks to my stupidity I gave Maria and extra wee task.

When I arrived in Donetsk from Kiev on Saturday I had noticed the I had lost or forgotten two things, a hat and some cash.

I asked Maria to make a call to the hotel in Kiev to see if I had left anything in  my room. I was pretty sure that was where the hat would be but not so certain about the three crisp brand new 200 Grivna notes that I had taken from an ATM.

Sure enough my hat was there, just where I thought it might be, under the cover of the bed, which I had not checked when I did my quick check out scan of the room.

Now the problem was how to get it, because the hotel said that they would not send it to me.

However, that was a problem for another day there were more pressing things to get ironed out before tomorrow was sorted.

Over diner, Rav, Tiffany and Maria made various phone calls, firmed up guests, stood down others and liaised with London now that the shape of tomorrows programme was becoming a bit clearer.

Maria working on her iPhone over dinner

By the time we got back to the hotel, the one that we had stayed in before we went to Kiev most of the setting up was done.

I dropped Maria off at home, Tiffany got the script for the report finalised and Rav started the edit.

It was around 11 pm when I got to my room. Rav was a little bit later, it was about 1 am when the final edit was sent to London and he could get to his bed.