Here's Canada House, the most popular pavillion at the Winter Olympics. It took something like 3 hours to find and when we got there it was closed because Wayne Gretzky decided he wanted to see it. So, for safety concerns, the police closed it down as Wayne and Vicki Gabreau ate Canadian bacon or what ever inside.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Olympic Curling
The third event that we went to watch was Women's curling. It was pretty cool but no one was there. There were three teams playing on the four sheets and all three teams that we were rooting for - so Canada would have a better chance of making the playoffs - lost. Regardless, the Canadian women made the medals.
Mascots
Here's Narv with the images of the 20th Winter Olympic Games. This was funny not for what was happening during the picture but what happened afterwards. The blue thing on the right flicked Narv's hat and started laughing. I guess you had to be there.
Canada vs. Finland
This is the view of the ice from our seats. We were something like 5 rows from the ice.
Canada vs. Finland
Obviously, we thought Canada was going to cake walk through the Fins but, of course, Canada lost 2-0 and we had to deal with all of the talk from the Finnish fans. The atmosphere before the game was amazing...at least 2/3 of the crowd were Canadian and they were trying their hardest to get going. However, after the first Finnish goal we didn't hear much from the Canadian fans for the rest of the game.
Russia vs Latvia
This is my view of the ice from my seat. The Latvian fans are crazy and they were chanting heavily during the entire match...even as their team got their butts handed to them 7-1 or whatever. Narv's seat was suppose to be next to me but because he had all of his luggage with him the usher made him sit higher up in the stands. There, he met the most important guy of our trip: Eduardo. Eduardo, a high school student took us everywhere we needed to go and generally took care of us for the day. If it wasn't for him we'd probably still be there trying to find the enterance to the Curling games.
London to Turino
Our flight to my first Olympic experience was delayed by an hour our so by fog. The flight was pretty amazing because if I had to guess I'd say at least a half of the plane was full of Canadians making their way to the Olympics. Underneath this jacket is Narv trying to get some shut eye.
Casa Batllo
The fourth Gaudi that we visited, it is a weird building that the owner had asked Gaudi to redesign to increase the amount of natural light that entered the building. At night, they light it up and it looks even more impressive.
Parc Guell
Another Gaudi, it's a huge park that overlooks the city. It's made up of weird things built out of sedementary rock. In the middle of the park is Gaudi's last home which the city has turned into a Gaudi museum. (The city has like thirty different Gaudi museums.) Very weird park.
Casa Mila or La Pedrera
Another Gaudi, it used to be an apartment block but is now a museum. He built the roof up with weird statues of warriors that look amazing in the light of the night. It's super cool but enough of Gaudi, right?
Top of the Sagrada
This is the view from about the top of the Sagrada. I don't know what the phallic tower is in the background.
Fabio in Barcelona
This is Fabio. He's another med student that we ran into and I believe he was from Portugal. Here he's looking at a map of the weird wonderland-type place we decided to go spend half the day to find. If you can believe it - I can't believe we did it - this centre, which we paid 15euro to enter, was a tourist site that contained different pavillions representing Spanish life of all the regions of Spain. (Look, it's Sicily and over there it's Valencia.) The idea was to be able to visit all of Spain without leaving Barcelona. It was weird that we went to this to get a feeling for Spanish life while we were in Spain. Whatever. Never again.
Olympic Stadium
This is where the opening and closing ceremonies of the Barcelona Summer Olympics took place. Now, it is the home of FC Barcelona. Though it looks somewhat impressive here, it's actually a really crappy and delapidated giant stadium.
Barcelona Museum
This is the painting on the ceiling of the Barcelona Museum. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the Museum but we did anyways in the spirit of competition. This is my picture. The other picture is Karen's.
Barcelona
This is Barcelona from the top steps of the Barcelona Museum. I believe (but might be wrong) that it was the Royal Palace of Barcelona before it became the Museum. This was the first full day in Barcelona and it was very cold even though the sun was out.
Gothic Region of Barcelona
This is the Gothic area of Barcelona with its narrow alleys and super high buildings. The Gothic Area is suppose to be the party area of Barcelona and it had tons of touristy things to do. I met Karen on the plane. She's a fourth year med student from The Netherlands. She was really knowledgeable about Barcelona which was good because I didn't know anything about it.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Barcelona, Spain
Hi all. I got back from Barcelona two days ago. It was tremendous. The weather was a balmy 23 degrees and the sun was out for the majority of the four days I was there. I'll post more about it once I get back from Torino. The weather in England has been great, too. Today, it was at least 15 degrees and the sun was shining like it was summer time. I'm at Stansted airport right now waiting for my flight to the 20th Olympic winter games. It's going to be great. Narv just arrived after a tough flight from Vancouver but we're all ready to go.
Go, Canada, Go.
ed
Go, Canada, Go.
ed
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