We decided to head down to where all the action was on Saturday Morning. We lazed around in bed for a bit, watching Olympic coverage on TV before heading downtown. Then of course, we heard about all those Ass Hats causing damage to the Bay, which got me pretty upset because I’ve been overly sensitive about the Olympics lately.

We took the skytrain down and got off at Granville hoping to stop by at the Olympic Store at the Bay (despite the damage done) to pick up some merch, but they closed it all off so you couldn’t get to it through the inside of the Bay, which sucked big time, and the line (from the outside) to get in was way too long so we gave up.

24 hour glass repair was on site right away. There was a lot of ‘Go Canada Go’ chanting going on which was cool.

I’m a Lumberjack.

Everyone’s already taken photos of this stuff, but I haven’t so here it is.

Walking south along Granville, checking out all the art.

In classic Danielle mode, I originally wrote ‘Here come the Cheques!’.

I made Chad take a picture of my good Bang day. (Thank you Marlee!)

For lunch we stopped in at the Olympia Bar & Grill on Granville. It looks fairly new, but then again, I haven’t been down to Granville in a while. The place was totally empty when we looked inside, but the wait staff was so nice and inviting that we decided to stay. Chad was astonish at how cheap the beer was ($4.25 to be exact) that he fell in love with the place and wants to go back ASAP. We might hit it up tonight if your original plan fails. I had the Mediterranean Pizza and Chad had a Calzone. Both were really good. I liked the atmosphere of the bar, so I’m pretty sure we will be back. By the time we left, the place was pretty full. Chad joked that they should give us a discount because we ‘brought the people in’. I think they actually did.

After lunch we headed to Yaletown. By this point it was pretty cold and rainy so we stopped in a little boutique that had some Olympic Merch (including an umbrella) so we picked one up. The store was adorable, expensive, but amazing. I would love to go back there. They had such cute home decor stuff and baby stuff.

We pit stopped it in the Roundhouse in Yaletown before going next door to Casa Italia cause Chad had to pee. Ha. He said it was the nicest portable he had ever been in. It even had granite counter tops! TMI?

Casa Italia. I don’t know what an of these words are suppose to mean.

Represent!

A map of places to climb, I believe.

Italian Olympic Merch.

I’m sorry Italy, I love you and all, but what the hell were you thinking?

Each item of clothing ran $300 to $450. Um…are you kidding me!?

A lot of fake cheese.

The had this section of Italian art which was pretty neat. I loved this clock with the little bird waiting to pop out. There was even this set of dishes that when you stacked them the right way they made a globe. Pretty friggin neat if you ask me.

Checking out all the sporting footwear. I, of course, loved the ice pick/hiking boots because of the sharpe violent spikes on the end. Kind of maybe wanted to use them on the ‘Anarchists’.

Walked through Yaletown and found this little building. I don’t know what it was but there was a lot of people on computers. Maybe the Yahoo house?

I asked Chad to take a picture of me.

“No, Chad, can you move back and get the whole thing?”

“What the hell, you don’t even see what I am looking at”

“Yea well I would have had to move really far back”

…

I swear to God.

I’m pretty sure I was British in my previous life.

Back downtown on Robson where all the madness was.

He can never give me a normal face. What, do I disgust you that much!?

CTV insanity.

Chad and our new umbrella!

A couple of Moms commented on how cute it was. Chad wasn’t impressed.

Adorable!

We walked up Robson so I could check out a couple of stores, but I didn’t find anything worth buying, so I grabbed a Starbucks and we headed home.

Found this really cool art installation at the Burrard Skytrain Station. I think is was a project done by an Emily Carr student.

See, we can never get a normal face.

Shhhh, look, theres Chads security pass. Don’t tell anyone.

You can’t really tell, but I swear to you that he looks Asian on all his Accreditation tags.

Good times spent downtown. Once Chad gets home from work tonight we are going to go down to Granville Island and *try* to get into the Atlantic House. But I have a feeling thats going to be a huge fail, especially since we are not going to stand in line for 2 hours, so we will probably end up back at the Olympia Bar & Grill. Fine by me anyways!

Alicia and I were both very excited this morning, dressed in our Olympic gear, waiting for the excitement and entertainment that is the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Olympics.

My Mom kept phoning us giving us updates on the torch relay and we were following it on Twitter and Facebook. Then all of a sudden out of the corner of my eye I saw a bunch of Cops riding on horses right in front of my window at work. I screamed in excitement. I’ve never been so excited to see cops on horses in my life. We watched in anticipation to see what was going on, but they just trotted up the street. I then realized that I had heard that the torch would be making its way down Commercial Street and quickly checked the status of it. It was currently at a pit stop not to far away, so Alicia and I grabbed our stuff, said we were going out for an early lunch and hulled ass up the hill to Commercial Street.

I imedietly saw the horses and started to squeel in excitement. These Olympic games, they have me getting excited over the weirdest things. There were people everywhere and we were a bit confused as to what was going on. Then the cops told everyone to get out of the way and they blocked the street with the horses.

We quickly saw a flood of people heading out way down Commercial. The first crowd was filled with Protesters, but there were people carrying Canadian flags behind them. We were very confused as to what was going on.

The look of pure excitement and exhaustion on our faces. Running up the hill was death, but the horses has me so excited like something REAL was going to happen. Also notice my giant 2 front teeth. Got to love them!

It was very disappointing to be so excited that we had the chance to see the Olympic Torch pass by, and then for it to be ruined by protesters, who didn’t even know what they were fighting for. Everyone was yelling random shit and I was getting so angry. It’s very hard to see people bashing and hating on something you love and feel so passionately about.

We wondered North down Commercial to see if the protesters were in front of the torch, but quickly realized there was no torch. A bunch of kids from the local school were walking behind them waving Canadian flags in support and we asked them what was going on. They informed us that everything has been re-routed because of the protesters. I yelled ‘Effing Hippie Douchebag Protesters’ really loud in frustration and they all laughed and cheered, which I thought was pretty funny.

Alicia and I took off towards First ave hoping we could catch it there but no matter how many blockaids the police set up the protesters kept by passing them. The more it went on the angreier Alicia and I got and the more we yelled back at them. I even got into a personal verbal scuffle with a couple of them. I was Italian Raging inside.

Eventually they took over the intersection of First and Commercial causing a major traffic jam, and really doing nothing other then annoying the shit out of people. A ‘Go Canada Go’ chant started to fight back all the bullshit they were chanting.  The torch had been completely re routed and they were no where near it so it was all pretty pointless and annoying.

Alicia called her Mom to see where it was now and we headed in that direction. However, people were already walking back so there was no point.

Just as we turned the corner I noticed an Olympic Torch Bearer standing around a bunch of people. I quickly pointed her out and Alicia and I went up to her and she asked if we wanted to take a picture with the torch. It was so nice of her! We didn’t get her name, and I tried to look online if there was a list of all the torch bearers but I couldn’t find anything.

It was a pretty neat experience dispite all the negative crap that was going on around the Drive. It was very nice of her to come up and to see all the people who missed the torch relay because of the protesters.

It really sucked not being able to be a part of the torch relay, and when I found out it was going to be so close to work I thought I was going to have the chance of a lifetime. I know people have the right to protest, but it really upsets me when their protesting prevents something from happening, something GOOD from happening. Think about all the torch bearers who were excited to run down the street with people cheering for them, having to be re routed just to run down a street where there is no one cheering you on, because no one knows you are there!  It also really bugged me that the protesters prevented the torch from being presented at Victory Square where Veterans had been waiting all morning to see it.

It was also really horrible to hear of the news of the Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili passing away today in Whistler. Alicia and I were sick to our stomachs when we first heard. What a horrible, horrible thing to have happen.

Now I kind of feel down about everything, even though I was so excited this morning. Hopefully getting toegther with friends to watch the Opening Ceremonies picks up everyones spirits!

Well, I think it’s pretty obvious that the one word I have to describe the dress rehearsal for the Opening Ceremonys is Amazing. Even if I were to described to you what happened, it would be pointless because you need to see it to understand. It was one of the most visual shows I have ever seen and I loved it. Claudia got very emotional during it, but thankfully I had some Kleenex. We were so close to the stage too. It was just awesome.

Unlike the dress rehearsal on Monday, we got to see all of the performers live. They were absolutely amazing, especially the song for Peace, Claudia and I lost it. There is also a lot of audience participation that we were told about, but didn’t get to see, since we weren’t the real audience, so that will be very interesting to see on Friday. They had volunteer stand ins for all the dignitaries and for the athletes. The stand ins were pretty funny as they had to pretend they were the real person giving their speech, or doing whatever it is they were suppose to do, but obviously couldn’t so instead they just took up the allotted time and read us a bunch of random Vancouver trivia. It was very amusing. We didn’t get to see the torch or anything related to that either, as they are keeping all of that a secret.

I can’t wait to see if on TV tomorrow with all the athletes, and the torch.  We are heading over to my Moms to watch it on the big screen in HD tomorrow night. It should be very entertaining. I also need to figure out which events are on TV and when so that I don’t miss out on the action.

After all these years of preparation and all these months of Chad going crazy with his job, it’s finally here. It’s so weird to think about.

Chad won two free tickets to the Dress Rehearsal for the Opening Ceremonies through work yesterday. Only problem is that they are for tomorrow night and hes got a night shift. He said he still wanted me to use them, but for some reason it just felt weird thinking of going with out him. I was so wishy washy about it. To think I was actually contemplating just staying home and letting them go to waste. Luckily he smacked some sense into me.

I’m taking my favoirte Chilean with me tomorrow night. We have to leave work early to be there with enough time to go through security. We can’t bring any cameras (obviously) or any food and we have to wear white tops. I read some news reports of people saying its going to be an amazing show, so I’m quite excited to see it. But, I am going to keep my lips sealed on the matter and not tell you anything about it until after the real Opening Ceremonies. The only thing I am having a hard time with is the no camera bit. Not because I want to sneak pictures of anything, but I want to have my camera with me for AFTER the show, when Claudia and I wonder around downtown. The blogger in me is dying knowing I won’t have my camera with me.

I haven’t figured out exactly what free shows and things I will be attending yet. Alicia is going to be working every day with me during the Olympics, so we plan on taking the bus down town after work most days and just hang out.

Monday, Chad and I, along with Claudia and Elise, plan on going down to the Atlantic House on Granville Island to watch Sloan play and drink some beer. It should be really fun and I’m quite excited about it. I can’t believe it is only 3 days away!!! I’m going to live it up as much as possible.

As for now, I should get my stuff for work ready, so I can go to work early tomorrow. Then I need to figure out something white to wear. This should be interesting since the only white I own is in t-shirt form and that is going to be cold!

Work is so busy. Everything is going wrong. There is not enough time for any one or anything. I neeeeed mooorrrreeee TIME.