Day One: An Olympic Wait

A few days ago, I packed up everything (including a sewing machine? That one confuses me too..) and headed over to Vancouver with my sister to take on the Olympics first hand.

Now, not only am I very excited for the Olympics, but this is the first time I have ever been to Vancouver.  We decided to take the Sky Train downtown, and taking the train here is so much more organized than taking Calgary Transit (sorry Calgary).  I just couldn’t get over the fact that there is so much room to squish into the car, the doors slide open on their own and have warning bells when they are about to close and the train cars are air conditioned!   As an avid rider of the C-Train I was very excited.

Now, because of how many people are relying on the trains for transport, there were people there to ensure people were let off the train first before everyone squished on and to help us tourists figure out if we were about to board the wrong train.  If you are headed to Vancouver yourself, you will see these lovely people dressed in green sweaters.  Once we surfaced to the street there were SO MANY PEOPLE.  The police have even put barricades up on top of crosswalk lines to ensure that people are staying safe when crossing and staying within the lines.  There was also about 4 cops on each street corner and each train platform; the city of Vancouver is doing a GREAT job at keeping everyone safe around here.

We made this trip downtown to pick up our Olympics Tickets at Tourism Vancouver because we were told they would not mail them to us.  We stood in line for TWO AND A HALF HOURS and that line was only to pick up your tickets, not purchase them.  There was a line that zig-zagged all through the building and only two tellers to help us with our tickets. Let me tell you, there was some unhappy people in that line up.  Everything there seemed a tad disorganized, especially when we were told we could leave the line to go to a box office at BC Place to get our tickets; one of us went down there and were told you couldn’t pick up your tickets at BC Place.

So, if you are headed to the Olympics and still need to pick up your tickets there are only two places you can get them at Tourism Vancouver at Waterfront, or Robson Square, so make sure you leave yourself some time to grab those. There were some people in line behind us that we missing their event because they had to wait in the line to get their tickets!

If you are headed to Vancouver and like me, are totally lost, look for people in either a)green sweaters or b)blue jackets. We were walking around downtown trying to figure out where to go when we spotted a lovely lady in her blue Olympics jacket and had a name tag that said “Host,” she helped us figure out where we were going and made our trip a lot less hectic.

I will post some more updates for you guys on how our trip goes; we will be heading to two snowboarding events and two Victory Ceremonies and hopefully I’ll be able to snap some good photos.

Go Canada G0!