Vancouver 2010

I thought it was about time I wrote something about the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, since some of you reading this from afar may not have realised that they are taking place in our backyard this year! (Well, not literally - but the closest venue is only 9.3 kms from our house!) We have been hearing about it for the entire time we've been living here, so now that the Olympic Opening Ceremony is only 6 days away, I thought I'd better share some of the spirit. :)

In addition to the sporting events that will take place during the Olympics - the venues for which are scattered around Whistler (2 hours away), Greater Vancouver, and the local mountains (which are thus far severely lacking in snow; it's being trucked in) - there will be various cultural events, pavillions, nightly victory ceremonies, and big screens set up downtown to ensure everyone can be a part of it (well, except for those who plan to avoid the crowds and craziness at all costs - and quite a few locals have expressed that desire!).

The Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympics is on Friday 12th February at BC Place in Vancouver (where we saw the football game in August). The Closing Ceremony is on Sunday 28th February. Tickets for each of these ceremonies cost from $175 to $775 (the Canadian and Aussie dollars are approximately equal these days). Needless to say, we aren't going!!

The nightly victory ceremonies, which are being held in both Whistler and Vancouver, include the day's medal presentations as well as a live music concert, and some very big names are coming to town. The ticket prices for these ceremonies are only $22, but most nights had sold out by the time we got around to checking the website (i.e. this week!). Never mind, there are plenty of other things to do!

The Winter Olympics are followed by the Winter Paralympics in March. The Opening Ceremony is on Friday 12th March, and the Closing Ceremony is on Sunday 21st March. These prices are much more within our price range, although it is slightly sad that supply and demand would result in this - we think the Paralympics are even more interesting than the Olympics because of the added element of hardship the athletes have overcome! The tickets for these ceremonies are priced from $30 to $175, and unlike the others they have not yet sold out. We're thinking of getting tickets to the Paralympic Opening Ceremony!

And yes, we ARE going to see an actual sporting event during the Paralympics! We're going to an ice sledge hockey semifinal on March 18th. We are very excited about this because it looks awesome - check out this random YouTube video showing how ice sledge hockey is played!

Tickets for the Paralympic sporting events are also MUCH cheaper. Our ice sledge hockey tickets were $30 each (and they started at $20 for the qualifying events). I've seen Paralympic tickets as cheap as $15. Compare this to the cost of seeing regular ice hockey at the Winter Olympics: although some of the women's qualifying events start at $25, the tickets to the men's gold medal event are priced from $350 to $775! (The women's gold medal ice hockey event, however, only costs $125 to $325!) So the cost of tickets to Olympic sporting events is obviously determined by supply and demand rather than principles of equality/ equal opportunity... but we're happy some things are cheap enough for us to go and see!

The cultural festival that is running in parallel to the Olympics is called the Cultural Olympiad. This involves hundreds of events, most ticketed but some free - concerts, theatre, performances, exhibitions etc - to showcase the local and Canadian arts scenes. We have tickets to one Cultural Olympiad event so far - a performance by The Lost Fingers, a French-Canadian "gypsy jazz" string trio based in Quebec City. Alert readers may recall that we randomly caught the end of a live performance by The Lost Fingers upon walking into the Calgary Stampede with Megan and Justin last summer, shortly after Ben had heard them on the radio and really liked them - so we're looking forward to seeing them properly this time!

Of course there is a lot of Olympic merchandise floating around too. Here are my lovely Vancouver 2010 mittens...





And Ben's toque (Canadian for "beanie")...



And these fabulous Olympic pins (the reason I could find such perfectly appropriate pins is because there are literally HUNDREDS of them available - they've been releasing them for years - click here if you have not yet come across the unreal subculture of Olympic pin collecting!)...





I also have an Australia t-shirt from the Canadian store "Roots", which released a line of clothing with the various countries' flags and the advertising slogan "we all have roots". Here I am wearing it and holding an actual Olympic torch that our friend Harold got to carry because of his work (torchbearers have the option of purchasing their torch for $400)...



And here are some photos of Harold carrying the torch on Vancouver Island last year (photos provided by Kathy; we weren't there)...





So as you can tell, although I hadn't really mentioned it before now, the Olympics have been making their presence felt here for some time!! And yep, we're starting to get quite excited about it all! Expect to hear more on the topic over the next few weeks...