Sunday, February 14, 2010

Strong and FREE

Finally got Tony's photos off the camera -- here I am at the opening ceremonies, hoisting a cup of Team Canada Ravelympics' official drink — an apple cider (7% alcohol).


And wow, what a whirlwind weekend this has been. It went by in a flash, but here are some more photos of Vancouver during the Olympics!


The wet side of Vancouver showed up yesterday when we met Dotty and Markus for the RCMP musical ride (free, but they did ask for donations to the Right to Play charity). And no, Dotty and I aren't related, why do you ask?

Obligatory photo of sock-with-mounties.



Did you know that there's a maple leaf shaved into the rump of each horse, and the horses are specially bred for the mounties? Pretty cool.


Then today, Andrew and I headed downtown to check out some of the other free events. We caught a figure skating demo at Robson Square (the handpuppet is a kid's project from England -- her name is Ice Cream and she's travelling around the world to visit different countries).


Then we went to the LiveCity Yaletown celebration site. This is about the halfway point of the lineup before the site opened. Fortunately, it only took us about 20 minutes to get in once the gates opened (there was a security check/metal detector crossing at the gate).


There is one good thing about all these lineups — LOTS of knitting time on Andrew's socks! The first sock is already done, and I'm at the heel flap on the second sock.

Then we went off to the Sochi World area, by the Main Street SkyTrain station. The crowd there was too big so we didn't even bother to line up. We did go to the Saskatchewan pavilion ("only" a 30-minute lineup). And then we went for a walk on the waterfront. Across the water is the athletes' village. If you click on the photo, you'll see an enormous Canadian flag across the rightmost building. I couldn't spot the Australian banner, unfortunately.


And then there was this highlight for me. Surrounded by all the corporate advertising and lineups, there was a little bit of public art. People have gone down from the pathway and built inukshuks out of the broken-up concrete along the waterfront.


And of course Andrew had to contribute his piece as well. It was such an unexpected pleasure to find this little oasis of unexpected creativity and joy on our trip.


And finally, one last image of the whole family ...

2 comments:

Chris said...

Another nice SIP picture! :)

It looks like such an amazing thing to be part of!

Mandy said...

Sorry, I don't mean to be little-miss-fact-checker; but I'm mostly excited that I can share something I learned about the RCMP horses. I asked one of the mounties when I visited the horsey tent and he said the maple leaf isn't shaved into the horse's rump, but simply the hair brushed backward using a wooden stencil. I thought that was nifty!