Settling in in vancouver - 11th; Olympic spirit on the 12th

So in the evening of the 11th of feb, I ate very nicely and crashed on the couch at the Chocolate Lily. I wanted to do stuff, but I'd booked this precisely because it was peaceful. I then slept a few hours, and woke up in time to speak to Liz before she went off to work.

I'll describe a bit more of the Chocolate Lily. The bed is big and squishy with nice pillows. There's also the chaise longue, which has some pillows that you can put up against the wall along the top of the chaise for extra padding so you can sit up straight and watch the TV. This is all in the Laurel suite, by the way, which is the smaller of the two suites they've got. I did actually get to see inside the Linden suite, but I'll write about that in another post.

Next morning I decided to have the morning in the suite, and do a bit of rummaging around on the TV. There were various flavours of news coverage, mostly about the run up, and about the tragic death of Nordar, the Georgian Lugist. Something that horrified me was the Canadian media showed Nordar's accident in full. It was horrifying to watch, and out of respect for him I will not repeat what I saw.

After a somewhat slothful morning, I finally got going and enjoyed a great shower in the beautiful slate bathroom with the heated flooring. I couldn't really see where my day had gone, but the purpose of a holiday like this was to de-stress and chill out after a stressful period of work. I gathered the documents I needed to get my Olympics tickets, and after slowly preparing myself I decided to "treat" myself to an old favourite: Kraft Dinner. I have a microwave in the room, so it made sense to get the dosed KD bowls where all you do is add water and microwave, then mix the cheese packet in. This was like performing a school chemistry experiment, with multiple phases. It was frankenfood at its finest, and filled a lunch gap that went without earlier in the day.

At 3pm, I then set out to get my olympics tickets. I walked all the way across the Burrard street bridge, and caught a bus to go into the heart of the City. BEar in mind that this day is the day of the olympics opening, and as a result Vancouver had many new inhabitants - including ticket touts and tourists. I was of course one of these tourists, and on my journey into the city with fresh eyes, everything looks so impressive. I noticed many people had olympic rings in lights on the balconies of their flats, all sorts of messages were displayed in windows urging Canada success in the games, usually Go Canada Go! or Go Team Canada! etc.

Everyone looks so happy. There are people from all over the world. I can't help noticing how many people are wearing Canada branded clothing - I'd estimate that 75% of all the people I saw in the street had on either that clothing, or had the Red Vancouver 2010 mittens.

My purpose in town was - on this occassion - to pick up my Olympics tickets. They are available to pick up at a hotel suite on Robson street. I walked quickly to try and make it before the 5:30 closing.

When I got there, it was a bit of a nightmare. They had apparently over-refunded me by nearly 300 pounds. This didn't make me happy, but fortunately I was in a situation to be able to pay it. The tickets are made out of thick card, printed with a stylised representation of the sport for which they are for. They have a hologram endorsing them officially, and the seat/price etc.

I left, and decided that there was a lot of action in the city to warrant staying around for a while to soak up the atmosphere. It was getting quite incredible seeing the build up to the opening, which of course was on the night that I was picking up the tickets.

There was this buzz in the street that caught me by surprise, and it was quite infectious. I'd heard that Canada had been skeptical about the games, but that as soon as the longest domestic torch relay in olympic history made it into home towns across the country, attitudes changed. And I could feel some of that attitude here. People were striking up conversations randomly with those standing nearby. You could ask anyone for help, and they would go out of their way to satisfy.

There were absolutely armies of official volunteers stood in the streets, ready to help people with directions, transit info etc. Why couldn't they have this at the station when I arrived? But they were all so helpful and friendly. Was this just how Vancouver normally is, or is it an olympic spirit? Is it the face of Vancouver, or the mask of Vancouver put on to impress the world. Time will tell, after the volunteers have answered the same questions over and over, and had one too many ndays in the cold.

There was a square in the city above which people were zip lining. I looked into it, and the line up was 5 hours long. A huge TV was projected onto the side of a building, and I had noticed that the olympics opening ceremony was underway.

I tried various places from which to view the ceremony, and eventually stumbled upon a tent where