Olympics Opening Night

On Friday I was in Vancouver for some work at the Children's hospital so I thought I'd check out downtown to see what I could see on the first day for many of the exhibits. I didn't want to wait in any lines so what I saw was limited.

Casa Italia is where I went first. There wasn't much there. They are selling clothing and have TVs going with images of Italy and Italian athletes. If you come at the right time they may be giving out cheese samples.

Next I wandered over to LiveCity Yaletown but the lineup wrapped way around the block and didn't seem to be moving, so I passed on that. I walked down towards BC place through throngs of people. LiveCity Downtown was closed as it didn't open until Saturday. The Four Nations plaza had just closed, so I walked up to Robson square.

There was a choir playing on a stage and down below beside the busy skating rink there was this group doing gymnastic/acrobatic tricks. They made a few mistakes but there's no way I could do many of the stunts they pulled off.

Up above the square people had fun on the zip-line. One of these weekdays I'm going to go wait in the line for that. I'm hoping it's shorter in the morning on a weekday. The zipline is quite short but then when else are you going to be able to zip in the middle of a city.

After this I walked back over to LiveCity Yaletown but there was still a huge line. I'll have to check that one out another day too. So then I walked along the water towards Science World, now called Sochi World since the Russian's took it over for the Olympics.

At the Plaza of Nations there was a market setup with everyone selling their jewelry and souvenirs and lots and lots of food. I bought a snack and then a concert started up. I'm not sure what their name was, but I did hear it was 3 girls from West Vancouver. The songs were good but you had to stand in the rain to watch it. My feet were already quite wet by this point though.

Further along the way was the Quebec house. It looks like a huge cube from outside but it's not a building as there's no ceiling. There was a small restaurant inside and a band that I assume was from Quebec was playing. The people eating were watching but not really anyone else even though there was room. Probably because you got rained on.

Next to the Quebec house is the Saskatchewan pavilion which had this big globe thing that was being projected on. Apparently you could go inside it but I heard that there was another line after the one you wait in outside.

Across the way was the Hockey house where the elite are hanging out with hockey stars and actors.
I went back towards BC place and watched a little of the start of the opening ceremonies on the huge screen on the side of the Ontario pavilion. Then I got on the skytrain and went back to Surrey. Back at Surrey Central I went into the theaterette at school and watched the last hour or so of the ceremonies with some other students.

Then I went over to Holland park where there was barely any line to get into the Surrey celebration site. I had to go around the mall to get there since they wouldn't let me go across the rooftop parking. It turns out this is where they were shooting the fireworks up from a few minutes later.

The fireworks looked like they were falling on the tower.

After the fireworks I stuck around for half an hour and watched some of the Blue Rodeo concert. There was quite a crowd there despite standing in the rain. There was also another concert going on inside a tent with a lineup to get in. Finally I caught a bus home to dry off my feet.

Torch Relay

So the Olympic torch relay went through Surrey for a couple days earlier this week. I biked over to see it the first night. I arrived at the route and wasn't sure if it had gone past or was yet to come. It was 5 minutes before it should have gotten there but at the same time there were people walking away. I figured I must have missed it and biked ahead to catch up.

I caught up to this thing and a couple other celebration vehicles with speakers blaring. These guys were passing out small coke bottles, either containing coke or light. Anyways, I didn't see a torch anywhere and the vehicles were followed by traffic and still no torch.

I figured it must have been before the vehicles. So I biked off again and got way ahead of it near Holland park where it was ending the night. When the vehicles got there the first one had a sign that said the torch would arrive in a few minutes and still no torch.

After more traffic and 5 minutes or so the torch finally arrived. There was an exchange of the flame from one torch to another in the middle of the intersection, very close to the end of the night's route.

Holland park was swamped by people I couldn't even get close with my bike. People were going crazy to get photos of the torch as it went by.

The next morning the torch was traveling closer to my house and I biked over and saw it before heading to school for meetings.

On my way to school I found that once again there were some vehicles waaaay ahead in the convoy probably confusing the hell out of people who saw them in the distance and ran to the road too late to see the sign that said the torch would be there later.

House of Switzerland

I plan to go to many of the free events and exhibits that will be taking over the city as part of the Olympics. Friday I went to my first one with some coworkers.


We traveled on the temporary Olympic line between the Olympic village and Granville Island. It is really quite slow and travels right alongside the street the 84 bus goes on, which I took all last term to UBC. But hey, at least it is free.

The inside is pretty narrow.

It was the opening of the House of Switzerland in the Bridges restaurant on Granville Island.

At the doorway was a Inukshuk made out of chocolate although it looked like some glue had been involved.

Inside there was a demonstration of making Swiss chocolates although it was hard to see what was going on because it was so packed.

Although we got there around the time it was supposed to open it was quite hard to get a table. After standing around for half an hour we managed to grab a table.

We bought a plate of Switzerland style appetizers that were alright and we had some Red Wine from Switzerland, although my Swiss coworker claims that the region of Switzerland that the wine came from doesn't get much sun. When he was ordering the waiter said "Dude, you'll have to speak in English", although I think my coworker was just saying the name of the dish. There didn't seem to be many Swiss people working there. When we ordered bread they immediately brought us a new bill with bread added on, $1 a slice. It was ridiculous.

People came around and gave out little tiny Swiss chocolate bars, packets of Ricola, and some packages of healthy tasting Swiss crackers. I also got a pin.

On the way out I got a small box of Lindt chocolates that were a limited edition milk chocolate with inner white chocolate.

After leaving we went to the Granville Island tap house for some much cheaper alcohol and then after that some of us went to a fish cafe near the entrance to Granville island which was pretty good. It was my boss' birthday but he had shown up just as we were leaving the packed Switzerland house. The place was alright but I hope to visit some exhibits in the coming weeks that have more entertainment and perhaps less people, if I go during the day on the weekday and more than just the Swiss house is open. This place opened quite early.

Aquarium trip

On Wednesday was my sister's birthday, but since she lives on a small island and has school during the week we celebrated the weekend before on the mainland. So 6/8ths of my family went and visited the aquarium. I gave my parents and sisters 4 passes to the aquarium for Christmas so we were using 4 of those and then paying for two other people. Except when I got there the girl working at the front was a friend of a friend of mine who recognized me and let the other two in for free.

It was Emily's birthday. She's in the back.

...and now she's trying to make the jellyfish mad.

We went to the 4D theater show which was playing a planet earth under the sea show. It wasn't that long but it included bubbles floating around the theater, mist and air being blown on us, things rubbing up against our ankles, the chair vibrating and at one point being poked in the back. All of these things were timed with what was happening on screen. When we got poked everyone briefly thought it was my brother Ben who did it.

We also visited the tropical jungle room.

There were some very blue birds there that looked like they were making out.

We also had to look waaaay up to find the sloth, sleeping up by the roof.

I think this is an electric eel floating by Natalie's head.

Most of the dolphins were hiding from us.

We walked a lot that day but here we took a break by the beluga tank.

They had a multi-touch table that could be used to move, resize, and rotate photos and video clips of the animals at the aquarium.

We also visited the frog room where you could put your head inside the action. Unfortunately we couldn't find the frog in this tank. All of the signs in this area had different ways of saying how the frog species are all dying out, except for a few species that were brought over to North America and are now eating all the native frogs.