Well, I forced myself to stay up after I finished my 5am volunteer shift so that my sleep pattern would return to normal. I called a friend and headed downtown.
We went to the new convention centre and waterfront to see the external cauldron. There were lots of people, but actually not as many as I thought. Maybe 4pm is the time to show up!
There was about a 45min wait for the upper viewing platform. I'm just not that interested in anything that long.
We headed over to Canada's Northern House. It was on Hastings St, at the old Hard Rock Cafe location, I think. Again, only a 20min wait! We got in and saw a caribou and inukshuk. There were lots of animals, stone and bone carvings, and we saw some traditional artic sports. Kind of like hangman with the man replaced by a stuffed toy seal, and trying to kick it.
We headed over towards Live City Downtown and bumped into the BC Hydro building, and hardly a line, we thought it was closed! An employee who is native carved 2 statues and is now in the building as a legacy. We saw the home of the future, 2 converted shipping containers made into a living space with "smart" appliances and sensors.
We kept on walking and hit the 4 hosts building, which is the Vancouver Community College downtown campus. All the aboriginal vendors are in there, lots of wonderful glass and silver native art. Really expensive carvings and figurines, up to $12,o00! Some decent bangles and earrings from $60 to $120.
We kept on walking and found the aboriginal pavilion at Queen Elizabeth theatre. There is a dome theatre with a short 9 min movie about the native people of Canada. It was pretty good, and again, we only waited ~ 20min.
We decided to leave about 7pm and realized that the women's hockey game just finished at Canada Hockey Place (GM Place). We had avoided almost all the crowds until now! Well, we were lucky, as most people were headed back into downtown and there was no real wait for the skytrain.
Not bad to get all that in, in ~ 3 hours! "Go Canada Go" and Canada flags were posted all over corporate buildings. It was great to see the patriotism come out.
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