Granville Island

Friday was my third day in a row in Vancouver checking out the sites and my last visit during the Olympics.

I went earlier than before to try and see the medals at the Royal Canadian Mint but the line up snaked up and down the block. Shortly after I got in line a lady that worked there walked by and someone asked how long the wait would be. She blurted out "All day!" and continued on her way. Luckily I think they will be offering this medal viewing during the Paralympics too. I switched to the much shorter line for just looking around the gift shop and seeing all the fancy coins. I was inside in about 40 minutes.

Inside they had many display cases of specialty coins.

This coin is 5 dollars instead of 5 cents.

This is the only playing card coin I saw but I wonder if they make a whole deck.
At $15 a card, it'd be an expensive deck.

They also had some kids games on touch screens that involved the Olympic mascots and a video on how the coins are made.

Next stop was Canada Northern house which had a decent sized line-up but it moved fast. The wait was about half an hour. Inside they had a few stuffed animals like this one, a wolf and a polar bear.

They also had a small stage where a girl told of some legends from the North and then let the kids play with some drums.

This tusk of a narwhal was pretty cool. They are like the unicorns of the Arctic ocean.

Downstairs there was a lady giving a presentation on diamond cutting and polishing. The only thing hard enough to cut a diamond is more diamond. Also she has a stressful job because if she makes a mistake of 5 mm the diamond can lose thousands of dollars in value. They were also playing cross country skiing on a screen since a couple of the men on the Canadian team are from the northern territories.

My third stop was the small aboriginal exhibit at the Pan Pacific hotel lobby within Canada Place.

There was a really long canoe there.

The aboriginal group there were Métis and they performed a number of dances that were from their Scottish background. It wasn't what I was expecting at an aboriginal exhibit but they were talented.

This man was also talented at carving out a pattern in the wood.

Next I hopped on the Canada Line and then took the Olympic Line over to Granville island. This group, Teatro Tatro Slovakia is (I assume) a theater group from Slovakia and they were setup just passed the entrance to the "island". It was a pretty funny show, very slap-stick with little dialog. Painted on the doors of their truck were images of sports in the Olympics, each with a number. Then they had a wheel that they let a kid spin to determine which sport routine they would act out. When I got there they were doing this ski jumping routine in which the skiers keep getting attacked or into conversations with birds while in the air.

The next spin was for hockey which was fitting since Canada was playing Slovakia that night. They started with a scene where people are going through the security check to get into the arena.

It turned out the hockey game was one of those small ones with the plastic players that you move along tracks. They weren't even playing that excitingly. Instead of just going at it full speed they took turns moving one man at a time and hitting the timing clocks like you do for chess. They started to hit each other though and soon broke out into a fight.

After watching the teatro for a while I went in search of the Place de la Fracophonie. Inside the building there were some booths on different French organizations. There was a stage nearby but it wasn't open yet.

Also on Granville Island I stumbled across CODE Live 2 which was way too artsy and completely weird. It was just a dark room with a big screen at one end showing a video. The video was of a sheet of glass breaking slowly into pieces with loud noise. That's it. Bizarre. CODE Live 3 was way better.

My next stop was the Come On In! production at the Atlantic Canada place. Ideally I would have gone to the food tasting, but I got there after the line was already at capacity. To see the show I waited in the lobby for an hour while I ate some food from the nearby market. The show was alright. They had one musician from each of the four Atlantic provinces and they were fairly talented as they told some stories about growing up there. It was Newfoundland and Labrador day of the Cultural Olympiad and the premier of that province was in the audience along with some other politicians.

On my way off the island I stopped a short while by the Slovakia show again. This time there was a guy unicycling while juggling basketballs. Then he threw them into the hoop. For at least one of them the guy holding the hoop had to move it to catch the ball but it was still far beyond anything I could do.

I made my way to Robson square and got there way before game time. The women's gold medal curling game was in the 7th end. I met Gordon and we watched as they gave up their lead with their last rock in the last end and then in the overtime end they screwed up again and lost it. They got silver which is awesome unless you compare it to the men's team or either Canadian hockey team who all got gold. At least it turned out we didn't need this gold to break the record!

Next up was the mens semi-final hockey game against Slovakia. Q joined us for the 3rd period. It poured the whole game and the steps we were sitting on were wet but it was an intense game. Canada dominated except for the last 10 minutes. I take the blame for that. At 9 minutes I used my amazing math abilities and said out loud "They have no chance, they'd have to score a goal every 3 minutes!". Slovakia scored. At 6 minutes I was stupid enough to say "They'd still have to score a goal every 3 minutes!" They scored again. I stopped making comments like that. No more goals! Canada won 3-2 and moved on to the finals.

Afterwards Q led the way over to a pizza place where Gordon, his brother James, Q and I had a quick bite to eat. We said goodbye to Q and walked towards the skytrain. The crowds on Granville street were going crazy. People were giving high fives all over the place. James went up on his brother's shoulders and got a ton of high fives.

I also saw one of the green men. Not sure if it was Force or Sully or someone else completely.

So now it's hard to believe the Olympics are all over. The gold medal hockey game on Sunday was super intense and will probably be remembered a lot longer than if it hadn't gone to overtime. Unfortunately I watched it by myself at home, but I was feeling crappy and I still am. I've come down with a cold after all the fun of the Olympics followed by Saturday's adventure. I'll have to blog about that next. At least now I have a use for the Ricola I was given at Swiss house way back when.