Vancouver 2010

Yes, we made a day trip to Vancouver to check out the Olympics!

It was great. The city was beautiful, clean, had free transportation, and was crowded in a good way. At night people were out walking around, stores were open late, all the restaurants had TV's showing the games, and there was free hot chocolate everywhere. It made me wish North American cities were more crowded all the time.

We left Redmond at 4:45 AM and crossed the US/Canadian border at 6:30 AM.
We parked at a park and ride in Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver and took the light rail into downtown.
Here were are on the light rail:

On the way, we talked to someone who recommended we check the downtown UBC bookstore for extra tickets sold at face value. We were in line at 7:30 AM and got tickets for the women's hockey playoff between China and Switzerland. Wahoo! :)

Nothing was open, since it was still early, so we went to the Granville Island Market. We found it to be much better than Pike's Market and wanted to eat ALL the food.

They even had mangosteen and longan (above).

Then we walked through Chinatown,

and finally came upon some Olympic Festivities

free Canadian candy
(I LOVE wine gums, and Mr. Big is Adam's new favorite candy bar...I think we ate 4!)

and Tim Horton's, a donut/fires/coffee/hamburger place. Here is Adam with the TimBits (donut holes)

and The Royal Canadian Mint

and we found the Olympic Cauldron

Then made our way to UBC for the Women's Hockey game!

Allez Suisse!
And they won the match.
Then we rode the bus back downtown and found a tasty place called Fritz' European Fry House to order my first Poutine:

Fries, cheese curds, and gravy...yum yum tasty yum!
Then we walked around watching the Men's Speed Skating on TV screens in alley ways and got free hot chocolate at Fancouver.

The day went perfectly, we had the best time running all over Vancouver together. However...on our way to leave we found a long line and unfortunately asked what it was for. It was a free Broken Social Scene concert, Adam's favorite band.

He was heart broken. We were there and could easily have waited in line, we just had not idea it was going on :(
Alas...