OH CANADA, WE ARE SO PROUD, CANADA TOOK GOLD IN MEN'S HOCKEY!!!

photo by Jean Levac Canwest of our goalie Roberto Luongo!

Could anything be more exciting than the above? Canada took the gold medal in the hockey game with Team USA!!! The final score was 3 -2 in overtime. Sidney Crosby scored the winning goal! Congratulations Team Canada! The photo above was taken by Shaun Best for the Vancouver Sun newspaper.

It suddenly dawned on me that the cauldron's light will be going out tonight and Dakotah hasn't seen it! So, I decided to take a chance and try and get her to it while the gold medal hockey game was on. We had a very quick trip because, win or lose, the downtown area is going to be a nightmare once the game is over. Half way to downtown, I called Robert, Loretta's hubby to make sure I knew where I was going. Of course I did NOT....I have mentioned before how directionally challenged I am. Luckily he was home and gave me good directions to get out of the Skytrain station at the correct stop. Of course being me, I still had to ask a couple of policemen along the way to find the actual cauldron!!

I believe the hotel these beautiful flowers are in front of is called The Fairmont on Georgia Street. It is a classy hotel with doormen out front!

And here she is in front of the cauldron. I explained to her the torch fire we saw earlier this month is now inside this cauldron. I am not sure she understood but will one day!

Eagle street art.

More changes at the cauldron. The lower chain link fence has now been replaced with Plexiglas. By the time it is time to end, they will have it figured out right!!!

Look how grey the sky is! It looked like rain but this is Vancouver...wait a few minutes and everything changes! The sun is now out and shining brightly!

Don't ask...I have no idea what or who this electronic voiced person is but he was posing for pictures

He is wearing a Canadian Flag as a cape...hard to see in this photo though.

Now this was just way too cool. The Russians and the photographers arrived and voila, a Kodak moment presented itself if you were in the right place! They are taking photos for the next winter games in Sochi in 2014!!

The costumes they were wearing were incredible!! And then they were gone, just like that!

Dakotah signed the guest book at Canada Place which will be preserved forever apparently! She filled the entire form out herself! I was impressed with her skills using the electronic touch keyboard thing....

And here is her submission!

The Olympic rings in the Harbor. I didn't see them last time!

More Fairmont Hotel flowers!

More street art!

These are on the Skytrain. Dakotah doesn't ever remember being on it before although she says Mommy said she was on it and asleep when she was a baby so this was a great adventure for her! Note how empty it is...I bet the line ups are huge now. We rushed to get out of the city before the hockey game ended and the crowds spilled onto the streets!! We made it home in time to see Canada win the gold just before the overtime started!

The daffodils are blooming by our Skytrain station now!

Go Canada Go!

OLYMPIC COLLECTIBLES

I purchased this cup at Wal-mart but it is an official Olympic cup. Eagle eye Loretta had found one at the Olympic store on a Wednesday prior to the Olympics and when we went down on the Saturday they were all gone!! I am very tenacious and decided they had to be somewhere else and so I checked the Olympic department at Wal-Mart and they had a few! It is the nicest mug I have seen featuring the Olympic mascots and with graphics all around the cup. To the right are Olympic pins. Waaayyy back last summer at our agricultural summer fair called the PNE, there was an Olympic tent set up to encourage us to get pumped the Olympics were coming. The venue was very quiet and very few people were there. They had a few events set up there and if you were successful at shooting or one of the other activities, they gave you an Olympic lottery ticket and a packet containing a pin. I came home with three pins I believe and three winning lottery tickets...they were scratch and win and I think I won about 14.00. Anyways, to complete the set you need five different pins. A few weeks ago local lottery ticket vendors started giving out the pin packets when you buy a certain amount of lottery tickets so hubby has been handing over the pins to me and I finally have a complete five pin set!!

When we were at the torch ceremony locally, Coke was handing out all kinds of freebies. The little coke bottles were issued to commemorate the torch ceremony and bear the torch symbol on it and the Olympic logos as they are an official sponsor. The interesting thing about these cute little bottles is that they are metal and have some sort of cushioned lining in them, I drank mine and will save the bottles. My son says he is never drinking his and keeping them intact. The flags behind were being given out by coke and are some of the nicest free ones I have seen handed out.

One of our athletes, Kristina Groves, won a silver medal at speed skating today to add to her bronze medal last week. She has two more events this week and hopes to win a gold and have a matching set of medals! Go Kristina Go!! In honor of her here is a picture of my Chatty speed skater...so far she hasn't won a medal but don't count her out yet! The Chatty games have yet to begin!!

WITH GLOWING HEARTS...

On Day 6 of the Olympics, Loretta escorted me down to the venues to look around. She has been there almost daily! My sense of direction is virtually nil and if I venture down on my own, I will probably never be seen again.....between the time Loretta left the night before and the time we arrived in the morning, officials had been busy and moved the chain link fence back a bit and cut a hole in a section so one could take a picture a bit closer and without the fence in the picture.

Isn't this an awesome sight? I was so excited to see it after being at the local torch ceremony and knowing that same flame is now burning in the main cauldron!

Here I am in front of Canada Place. You may recognize this from the TV coverage nearby.

Look at all the people on the sidewalks behind Loretta!!! You cannot imagine how many people are downtown. The weather is glorious and people are out in force to gather Olympic memories.

Here you can see where they have moved the fence and opened up a section for photos.

See all the people by the fence? This is a very busy place! There is also an area where you can overlook the cauldron but the line up was about an hour long so we didn't wait.

Spring is bursting out all over Vancouver. This is a flower bed close by.If you like scenery, you have come to the right city. Note the mountains behind the ocean harbor. Not much snow on those mountains as we are having one of the warmest winters ever.

Art decorates many street corners.

Quatchi one of the Olympic mascots welcomes guests at the Skytrain station. Speaking of the Skytrain, I heard on the news tonight that 2 million people rode on the rapid transit and buses today and the wait time to get a Skytrain home tonight was about 2 hours. It was very busy when we were there but evidently it is even busier now with about 150,000 people standing on the streets of Vancouver and enjoying the ambiance of the Olympics.

We took a few of our doll buddies along for the trip. We wanted to take a full sized Chatty Cathy but decided there would be too many people to get through, so we each took our Hallmark Christmas ornament Chatty and our American Girl Emily mini dolls. They were dwarfed by the mascots!!!

Many stores and buildings are decorated with banners and signs to cheer on the athletes and this store even has red and white flowers out front! Go Canada Go!!!

Vancouver brought back and electric streetcar system which will run until March sometime. It takes you to Granville Market and the fare is FREE!!! I heard last night one of the street cars was in an accident but I never did hear exactly what had happened. Hopefully they are still up and running as it is a fun and fast trip!

And here it comes! We were going to come back later and take a better photo but we never quite made it!

This is on the side of the street car.

One of the many information booths set up where you can get directions or maps and sometimes a hand out or two!

The entrance to Granville Island Public Market.
Displays outside a scrapbooking and stamp shop.

More flowers!

Even the daffodils are blooming here!

A planter of primroses in full bloom on the dock.

This building houses the food section of the market.

From Granville Island we took one of these little Ferry boats to Yaletown. These have a fare of 3.00 per person but it is such a pretty trip if the weather is nice!

This was taken on the Ferry ride back.

There is a row of houseboat moored along the water. Look at all the flags flying! If you click on the photos they will enlarge so you can have a better look at the boats.

This is a walkway alongside the water. Behind you can see many of the banners you may be seeing on TV. David Lam Park is behind there somewhere.

I used the zoom on the camera to get this shot of City Hall with the big Canada flag flying proudly.

This sign is really not a joke. I happened to watch the news the night before and saw that folks from the North West Territories had brought their dog sled teams down and were showing everyone how the dog sleds work. the dogs were gorgeous with big blue eyes. I don't think they knew what to make of the big city and all the people who came to see them though

This is the big Olympic superstore located in the Hudson's Bay store. These barriers are set up so you cannot get from the Bay retail store to the superstore. You have to go outside and line up. A few posts down in January you might remember when Loretta and Leona and I went to this store and it was virtually empty. What a difference a month makes!! I heard on the news last night that they are going to be keeping this store open 24 hours a day soon and this is the first time in the history of The Bay stores that one of their locations has run a 24 hour shopping day!

Here are a few of the people in line...no Loretta is NOT in line...we are just looking!!

And this is the line...that goes on and on and around corners and on and on and on....sometimes the wait to get into the store is 4 hours or more!! I read they were expecting 10,000 people per day and are consistantly having 15,000 and more per day! Wow!!

This is the library behind me!

Look at the size of this mailbox outside the post office! You can go into the post office and stamp cancellation stamps onto envelopes for souvineers.

If you click on and enlarge this picture, you will notice even the official cars are flying the maple leaf representing our country there is a maple leaf between the back tail light and the blue stripe at the back of the car!