Olympic Mania!

I've always loved watching the Olympics on TV. Winter or summer...I think they are great. Generally I don't like to watch sports but somehow because the Olympics have such variety and quick competitions and results it's really quite enjoyable. With the Olympics coming to Vancouver, I didn't feel really anymore excited about them than usual. But once they were here somehow it just became really exciting and brought out great feelings of patriotism and national pride. After hearing about all my friends adventures in the big city I felt that we just had to take the boys in to experience this once in a life time event. So off we went!

The only day that worked for us was going to be yesterday. Chad had a soccer tournament until 1 pm so our plan was to leave immediately after he got home and showered. The train left from Mission at 2 pm and we felt that we could just make it. We raced to Mission and got to the station with a few moments to spare but what we didn't take into account was the parking situation. Basically there wasn't any left. We circled the lot, tried the side streets and ended up finding a spot far, far down an industrial street from the train. By the time we hoofed it to the platform we had missed the train by about 3 minutes. VERY aggravating but there wasn't a thing we could do about it. We went to Tim Horton's for some drinks and donut holes, walked back and waited for the next train.

Waiting in the warm, beautiful sunshine for our train

Because we were so early we got some choice seats on the upper level on the northside so we could view the beautiful mountains. The ride in was smooth and really quite nice.

Golden Ears

The boys had been on the train before but it was the first time for Keith and I. We finally pulled into Waterfront Station to experience our first taste of Olympic mayhem. The station was one entire zoo of people. A sea of humanity....no telling how to escape. There were police and Olympic volunteers everywhere trying to direct people to where they needed to go in an orderly fashion. They even had a guy on a lifeguard chair using a megaphone to get people going. The crowd was all friendly and good natured though.

We made our way to the Royal Canadian Mint which was the one thing we really wanted to see. We found the end of the massive line and settled in for a long wait. Taken from our place in line for the Mint...the sunshine on the mountains was gorgeous

I was thinking maybe 2-3 hours. Sadly, they closed the line up right behind us because it would be time to close by the time we got into the pavilion and that would be 10 pm! We hoped to be well on our way home at that hour! What was really cool is that I spotted Rhonda (a fellow blogger) in the line up as well with her family. I would have never thought that we would spot someone we knew in those crowds! So after a bit of discussion we altered our plans. We abandoned our spot in the line up and decided to grab a bite to eat and head towards the cauldron instead. We picked up some California rolls at a sushi place near by and walked back towards the water.

Keith and the boys at Canada Place

Again the sea of humanity heading towards the same place was unreal. We were herded like cattle in the general direction of the cauldron.

Woot woot! We made it!

No need to ask how to get there....just follow the crowd! We were holding each of the boys hands very tightly as it would be impossible to ever find a lost child in that sort of a situation. We finally reached the cauldron and yes it was fabulous to see!

A big order of sushi to share. Nate gave it a pass...as you can see he's even leaning away from the offending food!

We decided at that point to head back towards Robson Square to catch the excitement there. The sun was completely set at this point and it was very COLD! I'm so glad Keith insisted we bundle up. I was a bit skeptical about putting on so many layers at when we left Abbotsford it was quite balmy.

We easily found Robson and checked out the Art Gallery, Countdown Clock, zipline, CTV livesite and all the other great things we had heard about. One of the highlights was the CTV live site. You could have a chance to be an anchor and read the news on camera for a few minutes. I was watching the screen and I couldn't believe my eyes when it was Heather (principal at MEI middle) up there! I pushed my way through the throng of people to go and say 'hi'. Person number two that I knew...wow....who would have thought.

Heather got some random lady to take our picture...too bad it's a bit blurry but it catches our happy smiles anyhow!

Then I saw Myrna (a teacher at MEI) with Heather and we had a great time chatting about our time in Vancouver. As we were all standing there, the medal ceremonies were being shown on the big screen. Jon Montgomery was getting his gold medal and the crowd went WILD! Then we all sang O Canada...so fun. We headed back to Granville street at that point because we had heard that the line up to get back on the train could be three hours! We had really hoped to catch the 9 pm train back home so we could get Liam from my parents before they went to bed. So we made our way back down Granville which was full of buskers, street performers and PEOPLE of course. I spotted person number four I knew sitting in a restaurant window! We waved and smiled.....what a coincidence! We were all pretty chilled at this point and stopped at a Starbucks for a hot chocolate and a bathroom break. The line up wasn't too bad for the bathroom....5 minutes for the boys but about 15 for the ladies. Ugh! We passed the Royal Mint as we were heading back to the station and saw the people that were in front of us in the line up we had abandoned hours ago. They were still outside the building waiting to get in. I do believe we made the right decision on that one! We hit Waterfront Station to find again the hugest sea of people trying to figure out where to go. Again, there were lots of police and volunteers directing people to either the skytrain, seabus or West Coast Express. We were very fortunate to be able to catch the 9 pm train but it was standing room only at that point. It was super squishy and travelling facing backward on swaying train in the dark made me think I might just puke! But all was well and it was an uneventful right home. At the Coquitlam station a few people got off and we were able to sit down for the rest of the ride home. We were tired but happy we were able to experience just a small bit of the Olympic mania!!!