This post is going to be a bit disjointed given the lack of photos that I have beyond Day 2 of our Olympic trip - my apologies. Jamie put all the Vancouver photos on his computer, and then deleted them from the camera before I could get a chance to copy them on to my computer.
In any case, Day 2 of our trip took us to our first event: Women's Curling - Round Robin matches.
Jamie's so cute when he's super excited! This was the Vancouver Olympic Centre, where the curling events were held. Once the Olympics and Paralympics are done, they're going to take away the ice and turn the building into a community rec centre.
The mascots, Quachi and Miga, were on their way outside to greet people, but we managed to snap a quick shot of them before they left the building.
Some hard-core Japanese curling fans were sitting a few rows in front of us. Some of them had curling stones for hats, others had brooms for hats which ended up looking like mops, but give them an A for effort.
And some of them just had loud hats.
Here we go! Warm-up time begins now! I thought that it was funny that the first thing they do as part of the warm-up is to cool their sliders. Should they call the warm-up "cool-up" instead?
There are 4 games going on at the same time during round robin play, and the Canadians were on Sheet D playing Great Britain.
And here's Cheryl Bernard in action! Canada won their game that day, so the hubby was happy.
After the curling match, we did some shopping for Olympic gear before meeting up with my cousins for dinner. We went to Tojo's, which is an amazing Japanese restaurant with arguably the best sushi you will ever have outside Japan (and maybe even better than some places in Japan). According to their menu, we learned that Hidekazu Tojo, the restaurant's owner and head chef, is one of the inventors of the California Roll, which is named after the locale of its unique ingredient (avocado), and not where it was created. I looked on Wikipedia about this, and he's not mentioned, so who knows.Whether he did help invent it or not, there was no denying that Tojo's has amazingly delicious food.
We then convinced my cousin to drive us past Cole Harbour to look at the Olympic Rings there. Ashley McIvor had just won gold in ski cross earlier that day, so the rings were coloured a beautiful gold.
The rest of the trip went by pretty quickly. In the days following, we spent one day doing nothing because I needed some time to rest, then another day downtown to see if we could get some more tickets to other events (no luck there), were late for family dinner with my aunts, uncles, and cousins because we wanted to watch the end of the gold medal women's hockey game at a bar downtown, saw Great Big Sea in concert (and they are SO amazing live), and watched the Canadian men's curling team take the gold. That was an incredible experience, and being in the building with everyone singing Oh Canada was something else. We saw Stephen Harper, Donald Sutherland, Mike Babcock, Tracy Wilson, and a few well known Canadian curlers in the audience, which was pretty neat. Guess Canadians really do love their curling.
And then it was back on the plane to head home just in time to watch the men's gold medal hockey game and then the closing ceremonies. This is definitely one Olympic games that I'm going to remember. Thanks Vancouver for all the great memories!!
Hi everyone! Jamie and I are in Vancouver, enjoying ourselves at the Olympics. Today, we're taking a little break from traipsing around the city to chill out and relax at my cousin's place in Surrey. They've been kind enough to let us stay with them for the entire time that we're here for the games, and honestly we couldn't have made this trip without them. Thank you, Joe and Patty!
So, since I'm chilling out and doing a little bit of knitting, I thought I'd update a little bit and tell you guys how this trip has been going so far. I'll update about my knitting in another post.
DAY 1 - Monday Feb 22, 2010
The vibe in downtown Vancouver is awesome - I really don't know how to describe it. So many happy people from all over the world, lots to see, and lots of great energy. The city itself has decked itself out with so much Canadiana, it's hard not to share in the national pride.
We first hit Robson Square to pick up some event tickets, and just looked around at all the stuff they had there. Everything is so lively with all the stages, music, pavillions, and I love it!
Watching some newscasts from home, we heard about what is apparently an institution here in Vancouver: the Japadog. What is a Japadog? It's a hot dog with a Japanese twist. Our cousins told us that they're really famous around Vancouver, so Jamie and I decided we needed to try one. They've got two stands, and our cousins tipped us off that one of them was less busy than the other, so that's where we went.
Even still, we waited in line for a half an hour; we were told that the line really wasn't bad at all.
Can you spot me, the pregnant lady in a red coat?
Here's the dog that Jamie got; I got the same one, just with some extra seaweed on top.
It's their okonomi dog - kurobuta (apparently this is a very high quality type of Japanese pork) dog, cabbage, okonomi sauce, mayo, and bonito flakes (fish flakes). Very, very yummy. In fact, these hot dogs are so unique that some news people decided to come and check things out.
This is the lady who interviewed me and Jamie after we sat down to eat our hot dogs. They even asked to film close-ups of us eating. How embarrassing! No idea if any news agencies decided to use that clip at all, but it was a pretty hilarious experience.
After our hot dog, it was off to the Olympic Cauldron!
The organizers still have a fence around the cauldron, but they've cut a swath out of it and put plexiglass in so that people can take photos.
After that, we just walked around downtown to do a little shopping, and just soak everything in. We spotted this car during our walk.
They were getting people to sign their car, which I thought was pretty amusing. But yikes; to drive from Halifax to Vancouver? Oh man. For anyone who doesn't know, that means these guys drove from one end of the country to the other; East Coast to West Coast. I wonder if their car is on its last legs, and if it'll make it from Vancouver back to Halifax.
And those were more or less our highlights from Day 1. We passed Lloyd Robertson on the street, which was kinda cool (he's a news anchor for one of Canada's news stations). We stuck around the CTV news tent on the street to see if we could get on the evening news as part of the cheering crowd. I think my jacket made it in a shot that the cameramen took of a baby that was next to me.
Coming soon: Day 2 - Our first live Olympic event!! And knitting. Yes, I haven't forgotten that this is supposed to be knit-blog.
