Into Vancouver: Exploring the Downtown Area Part 2

Day 5 of the 2010 Vancouver Games

Continuation of Previous Post: http://olympicletters.blogspot...downtown-area.html/

I left Pacific Centre right after the flower ceremony for women's Snowboard Cross and crossed the street towards the Vancouver Art Gallery. I went there because in the square was where VANOC had placed the countdown clock for both the Vancouver Winter Olympics and the Vancouver Paralympic Games next to a beautiful fountain in its square.

As of right now though, only the Paralympic Game countdown is functional, waiting its turn for glory in the city.

I didn't stay too long, as I crossed to the other side of the Art Gallery into the place that is now known as British Columbia Canada Pavillion and Robson Square. This is the place where un-accreditted international media can go to in order to get access and information to the Games. This is also the place where normal spectators can pick up their tickets to the venues before the event. There was a massive line here when I was there before the dress rehersal, and there was a massive line there today.

But I wasn't there for tickets or to pretend to be media. I was there for the ice skating. at the center of the plaza. This was the reason why I had dragged down my ice-skates from Whistler.

Unfortunately, I had not anticipated how busy the rink was going to be, that and the fact that they were regulating the place like a hawk, in that they only allowed a certain number of people on the ice at once. In the end, the excursion turned into a 2 hour event as I ended up waiting close to an hour for the people before me to use the ice, and then for them to resurface the ice for me to have 45 minutes of simply skating slowly around in a circle.

To be honest, if I hadn't intentially made skating on that rink an absolute goal of mine from the beginning of this day, I probably would have left as soon as I heard that I had to wait "one more half hour."

I did have my fair share of entertainment beforehand at least though. Former Canadian men's figure-skating champion and an all-around "icehole" (as Colbert would put it) Emmanuel Sandhu and MuchMusic VJ Leah Miller took the ice in the group before us. I suspect it was for a segment of MuchMusic where Sandhu, in all his former washed-up figure skating glory, "teaches" Leah how to "pairs" figure-skate.

Obviously it was done for its entertainment value as much as for anything legitimately educational. But it's MuchMusic for one, and it's Leah Miller for another. There are less brain cells involved than at a Paris Hilton slumber party.

When I finished with the ice, I raced up a flight of steps, but was stopped short of a good view of, the giant screen that was showing the Canada-Norway game. The place was packed to the brim of spectators that couldn't get tickets to tonight's game, and to be honest, I was dismayed when I looked up and saw that the score was still 0-0 early in the second period.

"Come on, Canada," I muttered. "You're better than these guys. Why do you always have to start off playing like crap?"

As if to answer my question, I roar was heard down the street, in the general direction of Canada Hockey Place. "Oh I think something happened," said an older gentleman next to me.

Something did happen. Jarome Iginla scored the first goal of the game, to the roars and sighs of relief from the crowd here, one that would become the eventual game winner of the evening.

Apparently, the crowd over at Canada Hockey Place was so loud, you could hear them from Robson Square several blocks away.

I wish I could have stayed in Vancouver to watch the entire game, but my first problem was that the last bus into Whistler left at 7:00 PM. And I wasn't really too keen on the idea of being left behind.

The other issue was that having taken a look at the hour long line-up to any of the bars within a certain radius downtown thanks to the hockey game, there was no place for me to really hang out anyway. So I left for Granville Station just before the end of the second period with Canada leading 3-0.

That isn't to say I didn't dawdle though. I walked down to Granville Street where it was blocked off to traffic as a part of a cultural Olympiad filled with artwork and street performers. There were some fantastic pieces set up, including this interesting statue piece where people tried to conform to the figures of the 'athletes' of a particular sport.

But my favourite of those was the lit totem poles, especially given how they looked at twilight.

I made one final stop. There was a pin trader standing at an intersection along Granville just before the Hudson Bay department store. There I traded my first pin - the little Cold-FX goalie for a gold pin of the red maple leaf above gold Olympic rings.

I ran out of time. I couldn't stop at Sochi World, and only made it back to the station in time to grab some McDonald's food and get into the massive line back to Whistler. Nearby was a contingent of Swiss natives, likely people who came down to watch the hockey before going back to their golden boys in the nordic events.

I fell asleep listening to music on the way back up to Whistler that evening. It was a long and energetic day.

But it was worth the trip.

Cheers!

Grace