Olympic Observations

While weren't actually in Vancouver during the Olympics, in many ways it felt as though we might as well have been, as Olympic fever was certainly in high swing. Below are my top ten Olympic observations. (In no particular order, of course.)

1. Unless it's July 1st, you'll never see so many people wearing red and white clothing that screams CANADA!

2. Unless you're in Moscow, you'll never see so many people wearing red and white jackets that scream RUSSIA!

3. While Vancouver is certainly a very multi-cultural city, the variety of different languages and accents I overheard was far more vast than the last time we had visited. Although Van already has a high Asian population, you could tell that there was obviously an influx of Asian tourists as many had their noses buried in maps and their digi cameras flashing. There were two or three languages I overheard but did not recognize, as well as Germans on the streets, Russians in the wine store, Italians in the spaghetti restaurant, Irishmen in the pub, and Aussie gals at the impound lot.... Yes. The impound lot. Bringing me to my next point....

4. To accommodate the increase in traffic, there is absolutely nowhere to park. As a result, we got towed. (We didn't see the sign up the block that said no parking after 3, and our meeting ran until 5.) And let me say, the impound lot was quite the hive of activity. Oh well, $65 is better than I had expected.

On the bright side, at least our rental wasn't stolen! Then again, someone would have to be pretty bold to steal a car considering....

5. There are police everywhere! And I do mean everywhere. It felt like they were on almost every street corner. Honestly, we couldn't go five minutes without seeing a cruiser or two, or an officer or three. I'd even go as far to say that you couldn't go two minutes without seeing one, but I don't want to be accused of exaggerating. I'd say five minutes is a generous estimate. (At least in all the areas we travelled through.)

6. In addition to a police presence on every street corner, Big Brother also occupies all corners of the sky. Helicopters circulate constantly. Our one producer speculates that it's intended to protect the city from acts of terrorism. Although, personally I don't see how a few helicopters could prevent any such thing. If some crazy person has a bomb strapped to their chest beneath his or her clothing, there's no anticipating that. Although I'm sure the helicopters would have an impact in helping to reduce crime with the ability to identify possible situations more quickly.

7. If you're a tourist without a map or a GPS, you're in trouble. Major detours spring up like weeds. What was open yesterday, might not necessarily be open today. Like in our case, Cambie Bridge. Bumper to bumper traffic slowly led us around through Chinatown, down Main and then finally to our producers' office over on East 2nd. We got very accustomed to hearing our GPS saying, "Recalculating. Recalculating." If we should never get to use our GPS ever again, it would still be well worth the investment for this trip alone.

8. Night lights. After our nap on Monday evening, I awoke to find a dozen large spotlights dancing in a vivid ballet that stretched across the sky and into the clouds. So cool. For the rest of the time we were there, I couldn't sit in the living room of our suite without my attention being constantly lured out the window. Okay, so it's not like the lights were doing anything that amazing - just crissing and crossing and bending and weaving this way and that - but it's still not something you see everyday.

(Forgive the pixely photo, but we didn't realize that we had our stupid camera on the video setting. :P)

9. While it was to be expected, there was certainly gouging aplenty going on. Of course I had seen it on the news before we headed to the city, but it was interesting to witness it firsthand.

For instance, our hotel restaurant normally offers a variety of tasty breakfast options for a range of prices. Right now all they are offering is a breakfast buffet for $25/per person. I don't know about you, but I can hardly finish a $13 breakfast, let alone eat $25 worth. When told of our sole breakfast option, our waitresses recommended a couple of other good places within the block. I think everyone else must've taken her up on her advice as the only people eating in the empty restaurant were three Russians. (I know this because they were all wearing those seemingly popular red n' white Russia jackets.) I don't know what the exchange rate is for Russian to CDN currency, but something tells me they were paying too much - even if breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Also, at the spaghetti restaurant, there was a memo clipped to the menu which read that a 17% gratuity would be automatically tacked on to all bills between Feb. 4 - 28th. This was something that I had seen on the news, because a lot of restaurants were concerned about travellers who are not accustomed to tipping in their countries. Fair enough. Fortunately, the service was great and so we upped our tip by another 3%, which is what we usually like to give for awesome service. But if the service was shit, needless to say we wouldn't have been so pleased...

10. There is an undeniable energy that feels almost electric, fueled by the high spirits of holidayers and all kinds of nifty sights n' sounds. Musical acts. Multimedia displays. Colourful light shows. People zip-lining across city blocks. Huge displays of every kind of artistic nature. Signs welcoming visitors in a wide variety of languages. Flags, flags and more flags. Everyone posing to have their photos taken. People even stopping to take photos of the homeless, which to me, felt kinda weird.

There was one point where Jim n' I found ourselves surrounded by folks snapping photos in every direction, so we pulled our camera out as well to take part in the action, only to realize, "Wait a minute... this is just Granville street. We don't need a picture of this."

I have to admit, for a girl who has never been totally "into" the Olympics,  (Yes, I absolutely admire the athletes' hard work and ambition. Sure, I appreciate the history. And of course, I love how it brings the world together.  That doesn't mean I necessarily care enough to tune in) I actually wished that we could've stayed for the opening ceremonies.

The excitement is definitely contagious. We almost felt like hypocrites when we joined the crowd to have our picture taken with the torch, considering that we never bothered to check it out when the torch passed through town. We recognized that it was one of those rare things we'd probably regret if we had kept walking by in search of a restaurant that wasn't overflowing out the door. We will never remember the name of the restaurant we ate at. But we will always remember that we got to hold the torch in Vancouver.

(Don't ask me where I was looking in this photo. I have no idea?)