The World is Watching

The Olympics is well underway and the crowds have flocked to Vancouver. Unfortunately the snow has not so so of the local mountain events have been affected. The week prior to the start, the roads were actually better than normal because an estimated 250,000 people have left the city.

We ventured down town last weekend to soak up the atmosphere and found the downtown area pretty empty. It was the day after the opening ceremony so we went straight to the Olympic flame first and found it to be shielded by a large chain link fence. It was so high you had to put your camera right up to the fence and photograph straight through it. They even had a cherry picker lying around the place so it looked really messy. There have been a huge amount of complaints from the public, and rightly so, so they have now cut a bit hole in the fence to allow people to take proper photos. You still can't get anywhere near the structure though.

The rest of the town was pretty quiet. The main shopping street, Robson, was dead with no one in the shops and the only busy area was Robson Square in front of the gallery. They had an ice rink where the Olympic characters danced about and allowed you to take pictures and a zip line across the road. Apparently the line up for this was 4 hours yesterday and it takes longer to get the safety equipment on than complete the trip so it doesn't seem like a great thing to wait for.

We ended up in H&M and found it to be like a Tuesday night (ie empty) and the restaurant that we had lunch in had two customers so I'm not sure what this event is going to do to the local economy. Obviously the hotels are doing very well as they are all fully booked and charging a fortune and VANOC will be doing ell with their ticket sales and merchandising but I'm not sure about the stores or restaurants.

There have been some funny stories about the lengths that the VANOC organization has gone to protect the official Olympic brand and sponsors. One local restaurant downtown was asked to change it's name as it was called the Olympic restaurant. Apparently this place had been a family run Greek restaurant for years but VANOC saw fit to drag them through the courts. Not sure if they won but it was a media booboo for them. Then there's a local clothing manufacturer of yoga clothing who were not an official sponsor but, nevertheless, put "a famous sporting event held in Vancouver" on their T-shirts and this upset VANOC too. Funny that.

But the weather has been the most disappointing as far as the events are concerned. Beautiful blue skies, warm temperatures and a distinct lack of white fluffy stuff has been an obvious issue. We were up Mount Seymour this morning and, while the views from the top were spectacular, it was like skiing on sugar. There were big rocks and tree trunks exposed where there is normally mounds of snow. It was still fun though.

We watched the opening ceremony on the world wide interweb and it was fun. The event tickets were $1100 each and you had to be in your seat by 5pm. The show ended at 10pm and you were not allowed to take your own food in so you had to buy their food. Very expensive I bet. The show was good, especially the light show but not $1100 worth of good. KD Lang was excellent and has a brilliant voice and was by far the best part.