Friday, February 19, 2010

Second day of Olympic viewing

Yesterday was even better than expected.  Of course we were excited to see the women's 1,000 meter speedskating competition, but little did we know that it would be a historic day at the Oval as well.

Like our day at Cypress Mountain, getting to the Oval required a hike as well.  I'm feeling that the organizers really wanted to make sure that you got some exercise as you were watching the athletes.  Maybe they were afraid of what overweight spectators might say about the state of athletics in general.  Nonetheless, it makes me feel a little better about my Olympic eating.
 
Here's a long shot of the Oval. The roof was made with wood reclaimed from the mountain pine beetle infestation.  You can see some of the details of the roof here:

Anyway, back to the historic event part - we got to see Canada take the Gold.  How crazy is that?  As I've mentioned, I'm not particularly nationalistic (and I'm not even Canadian), but it was fantastic to be in the home crowd when Nesbitt won the event.  Here she is doing her victory lap:
 
From speedskating we high-tailed it to Canada Place to see Canada's men's hockey team take on the Swiss.  It was an even better game than expected.  Our seats were in the absolute last row, but who cares?  Here they are warming up:
 
Canada scored the first goal.  Here it is, courtesy of Liss (as all event photos are) :

And here's another action shot:
 
What more could you ask for?  Overtime and a shootout!  We were offered tickets to the Russia-Slovakia game (I have no idea of the price), but by that time we'd had all the excitement we could take although that game turned out to be great as well.
Now we're trying to get a different flight out of Vancouver because they moved our men's Giant Slalom event from Sunday to Tuesday (when we're scheduled to leave).  It's not looking good, but we're not giving up.

Today is a free day.  I think we're going to Deutsches Haus to check out my people.  Other than that, we're going out to DB Bistro Moderne tonight (a Daniel Boulud place).  I have the feeling that tomorrow's post will be all about food. (The food at the venues blows! But I'll get into that tomorrow.)

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