Monday: Trip to the City-Keith

Monday, one more day before curling begins. Sigh! So, it was off to the big city. We decided to figure out how transportation is going to work to take us into the city. Our choices were bus or rail. We decided to try the rail; unfortunately that meant a 3/4 mile walk to get to the station. Once on the rail it took about 10 minutes to get into the heart of the city. It was amazing to see the underground network that they have to get into the large buildings.

We had several things in mind to do including some shopping at the Olympic superstore and picking up our award ceremony tickets. We had been watching on the news the line that forms to get into the superstore and we decided to check that out first. The line was 1.5 blocks long. OMG! I made the executive decision to try and come back later after we picked up our other tickets. OMG again! Another 10+ blocks of walking. Crap, my fat body is just not made for this much walking. LOL! But, I am a man and will show no weakness.

On the way we saw some very beautiful buildings including the one in the picture below. These are some very high priced condos on the river. I don't even want to know how much they cost.
On our way back towards the superstore we decide to see some other sites. This picture below is the Bell Ice Cube. It was nice building showing off Bell's technology. Oh, they gave us a very nice set of ear phones also.

After the Ice Cube we stopped at Live City Downtown, which was a bit of a disappointment. It is supposed to be a place where people who don't have tickets can go watch the games live on the big screen. So, they had one big screen, no seating and it wasn't even live. I guess there has been some public debate on this facility with how much tax payers dollars went into this facility and how little they received. Yikes!

Inside they had some Mounties shown in the picture below.

They even cut a maple leaf into the horses hair. Oh yeah, another 20 minute line to stand in to see this area. Needless to say we were both a little disappointed.

We decided to brave the line a the superstore; still 1.5 blocks. Amazingly though the line moved fast and we were in the building with only a 10 minute wait. That was the good part. Let's just remember that I am a man who when goes shopping knows what he wants, goes in the store, buys his items and leaves, quickly. I usually can execute this plan in about 1/2 hour tops. Good luck on doing that with this trip. It was chaos. I am sure Melissa was in her element having prepared for this experience by going Black Friday shopping for the last few years. I had a hard time even breathing. It was 2 steps, bump, excuse me. Repeated about 100 times. Needless to say I was all out of excuses by the end of the day. LOL The shopping trip lasted about 2 hours. Yes, Corey Mackey my ankles were swelled up like a pregnant women who was 9 months along. LOL

After the shopping experience, we decided to head straight to the UPS store and ship back some loot to our house. On the way we went past a Vancouver City Firehouse. The guys were cool and gave us a tour, patch and pin. The fireman were very cool.

After the UPS store we decided that we had spent about 6 hours on our feet and still had a 3/4 mile walk home. It was definitely time to go home and rest. We settled for a nice dinner and some beer to cap off the evening.

I would like to take a second to do some quick bitching about the USA clothing line at the superstore. Just because Ralph Lauren designs some clothes for you doesn't mean you can rip off the buyer to purchase some of your clothes. When a polo shirt goes for $160 dollars, you can kiss my... OK, that's enough, sorry about that. At least the Canadians know the value a dollar and are charging $50 for a polo shirt that has Canada on it. Maybe I will become Canadian...

Talk later and thanks for checking in.

Keith