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!