A Day Off!

Today, I had a day off - Yippee! Sonja and I decided to meet up in town and explore some of the Olympic sites downtown. We figured that the lines might be a bit shorter since it was mid-week. HA!

We started out heading to the Live City Yaletown to see the Panasonic display. It took us about half an hour to get through the security to get into the park and then we had to wait in line for about half an hour to get into the Panasonic theatre. They have a 3D HD home theatre set up there. The images are really impressive and this technology will apparently be available to the public in April. We decided to pass on the Coke house because there was a big line for that as well and we didn't really see a need to line up for Coke products.

We left Yaletown and wandered towards the Live City Downtown site. This is where the Canada House is located. However, we never saw the house because the line to get through security and into the park was just too long.

We then headed to the Waterfront to see the outdoor cauldron. There has been a lot of public outcry about the location of the cauldron because it is entirely behind a chainlink fence. You can put your camera through the fence to get a good picture but you can not take a picture of your family or yourself in front of the cauldron with getting a good shot of the fencing. They have somewhat remedied the situation today by removing a portion of the fence to make it easier to get photos of the cauldron and they have opened a raised viewing area from which you have a clear view of the cauldron. It is now possible to get a good photo with the cauldron although you still can't get close to it. Apparently, all of the fencing will be removed once the Olympics are over. It turns out that the concern is over the accessibility to the International Broadcast Centre adjacent to the cauldron. We did spend about half an hour in the line to go up to the viewing area but it was worth it to get the picture.

We finished up our evening with dinner at White Spot, a BC burger restaurant. The burger was good but I thought the fries were better (and I still prefer In'N'Out). After leaving the restaurant, we walked up to Robson Street which has been closed to traffic during the games. This has definitely become the place to hang out downtown and the crowds are thick at all times of day and night. It was really neat to see all of the people who are just there to celebrate.