Vancouver: Ready to welcome the world
We’re in the home stretch now – less than 30 days until the winter Olympics get underway. Personally, I’m excited, I love the Olympics and having it right here is going to be cool. I’m going to be watching it on TV (afford to go to the events? You have got to be kidding me) and going “hey, I know where that is! I went to school down the road from there!” Or whatever. I always get excited when I see places I recognize on screen, which happens frequently, this is Hollywood North. Like the end of the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, when they’re walking through a building to a restaurant, I actually squealed “ooh! thats the library!” aloud. But anyway, during the olympics this is going to be happening at an alarming frequency. Anyone who knows me, consider yourself warned.
The city itself is starting to show noticeable finishing touches. The construction walls are coming down on Granville for the first time in like 6 years, we have the spiffy new Canada Line skytrain from the airport to the city center (which rocks!) and even the ads on bus stops and park benches are now citywide exclusively for the official Olympic partners. Needless to say you can go blocks and see nothing but McDonalds, Samsung, Coca Cola and some random company I’ve never heard of before, but that apparently is the official vaccine supplier for the athletes. If I can survive the crazy-long commute times – God knows I can barely get on the train on some normal mornings, and when you add eight million extra visitors we’re going to need the people to cram passengers on the trains like they have in Japan – I hope to wander around downtown a bit during the games, because the vibe is going to be electric. All the excitement, the street performers, free shows, random overheard conversations in different languages to pretend to understand and happiness. It’ll be great.
If you happen to live in Vancouver and are hoping to get away on vacation during the games to escape the crowds, why haven’t you booked yet? Do you really have that much money just hanging around that you don’t mind paying eight times the regular price? The destinations you’re heading to probably have lots of space left, it is the low season, but the flights departing Vancouver don’t and are going to cost you a mint. At this point it’s not how much but what’s left. There are a lot of people I see on a daily basis who are surprised by this, but think about it: all the athletes, their fans and supporters are coming and going throughout the games – most of them don’t stay for the whole time, they just jet in, do their event and take off, as do their fans (to avoid a ridiculous hotel bill, as everything’s expensive), and when you combine that with the regular people traveling, there are shit tons of people coming in and out of YVR and only a certain number of seats on the planes. If you still insist on trying to book for mid Feb, do it now. Like now, now. Stop reading this and book this instant or else you’re going to be totally out of luck.
And if you already have tickets, remember that at this point (thanks to the underwear bomber) you can’t take any carry-on onboard the plane with you. And the heightened security due to that, combined with the heightened Olympic security, means that you’re going to be spending forever in line. Get to the airport early. Really early. 3-4 hours early. Any later and youre going to be in line sandwiched between the chaotic family with the screaming baby heading to Disneyland and the Blackberry-addicted businessman who texts continuously as your plane takes off without you on it.
I’m sure the city will change when the games start, and I’m looking forwards to it. What it’s going to be like I don’t know, but I’ll report back with the details in two weeks 
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I can hardly wait for the games to begin. Thanks for the great blog.