Quite a Week

It's been quite a week here in Vancouver. The Olympics have been an amazing experience to be around! I think today, though, it finally all caught up to us and we've been worn out.

We've been on the go basically every night this week, trying to experience all that there is to offer. Monday night I went downtown with Rob to Live City to enjoy the first Victory Ceremony with a gold for Canada. Tuesday, Wendy arrived to visit and Amy and I took her out for sushi and tried to take in some of the things on Granville Island. We struck out at both Swiss House and Atlantic Canada House as they were huge waits to get in, but we hung around the French Quarter for a little bit before walking home. Wednesday evening we celebrated Maelle Ricker's gold at Live City again before going to the Feist concert at the Orpheum. Thursday we got to take in our first sports event of the games as Wendy treated us to the curling which was tons of fun! We got to see the Canadian women beat Germany in front of a very raucus crowd. Afterwards, we tried Swiss House again and were shut out for a second time. In the end, we headed downtown to be overwhelmed by the millions of people down there watching with baited breath as Canada barely hung on to beat the Swiss in a shootout.

Friday morning, Amy and I received an e-mail from Owen that he had mysteriously received tickets to the Belarus-Sweden hockey game that he couldn't use, and would we like them? Apparently, a random, innebriated young woman approached him at about 3 am Friday (Owen is working as a traffic cop downtown throughout the games) and suggested that they become friends. Being the nice guy he always is, Owen humoured her with some conversation in between shuffling partiers off of the street and out of traffic. After a little bit, she dug around in her purse and pulled out a pair of tickets for him and then wandered off. With Owen having to work again, he offered them to Amy and I and we were happy to take him up on it! Since we had three people though (Wendy was here until Friday night), we snuck down to the ticket office when it opened and asked about getting a single for the game. Luckily, one was available, so we could all go. When I then picked up the tickets from Owen, I noticed that they were on the 200 level, which are the really nice suites between the lower and upper bowl! I took the single seat and let Wendy and Amy go to the suite first. Before the game even began, we texted back and forth and Amy came back out with both suite tickets and brought me in to join them. It turns out that the random woman was from VANOC and was simply trying to make sure that tickets were being used when they hadn't all been given away to the Olympic Family. There were seven or eight other strangers in the suite who had received their tickets similarly. It even ended up being quite a good game as Belarus faught back from an early deficit to get within 3-2 before Sweden scored again in the final minute for a 4-2 win.

After hockey, we toured all over town checking out Quebec House, Sochi House, the Olypmic Cauldron and several other spots. Last night, I went out with the boys to celebrate Elvis' 40th birthday down in Gastown, and now, finally, I'm out of gas. I'm looking forward to lying on the couch the rest of this evening and watching this Canad-US hockey game. Go Canada go!