Vancouver Olympics. Under the Big Top.

Critics refer to the Olympics as the five ring circus. Certainly, here in Vancouver, Olympic preparations involve hoisting a lot of white canvas tents. Pictured above is BC Place Stadium, which has just been closed to the public(and professional football) to fit it up for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. As I walked by the tent structure in the foreground, I could hear rehearsals underway.

That's the Olympic Village in the distance. It was turned over to VANOC just last month to prep it for the arrival of the athletes.

All of this area is rapidly being fenced off and fitted up with security cameras. The City promises to remove all the video cameras from public areas after the Games. We shall see. Until then, they will see....

It surprises Olympic newbies to learn that a lot of money is being spent on temporary international, national, provincial, native people's and corporate pavilions. Sort of a world's fair for the rich and something to do if you couldn't get actual Olympic tickets.

Here, a storefront in the upscale Heritage District of downtown, is being converted to displays by Canada's Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut.

Across False Creek, Vancouver's Science World & Imax Theatre(the big silver ball) has been leased in its entirety to the Russian government to show off the next winter games in Sochi in 2014.

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But the biggest pavilion of them all is Molson Canadian Hockey House. It will not fit in one camera shot. Just try to picture an 81,000 square foot rectangular, white canvas tent, surrounded by acres of asphalt. At $15,000,000, it is the largest, temporary, freestanding pavilion ever built in Canada. Like at the Super Bowl or a Formula One event, entry to the Big Tent will not come cheaply. Tickets ranging from $99 for a half-day in the "fan zone" to $8700 for 17 days access to an executive lounge area with catering by the renowned chef, Wolfgang Puck, first rate music and comedy performances, a chance to meet the Who's Who of NHL and world hockey and all the beer you can drink. Molsons is planning for the consumption of over 350,000 cans of beer.

***They better have portapotties!

Ski Season Starts!

With only 3 months to the Opening Ceremonies of the Vancouver Winter Olympics, the local mountains are opening with some of their earliest skiing ever!

Cypress Mountain, less than half an hour drive from the B & B, opens today for both alpine and cross-country. During the Games, Cypress will host Freestyle (Aerials, Moguls & Ski Cross) and Snowboard (Half Pipe, Parallel Giant Slalom, and Snowboard Cross). Two stadiums, each with a 12,000 person capacity have been constructed. The huge new Cypress Creek Lodge offers excellent apres-ski dining and lounges. It isn't an Olympic sport but I love the snow-tubing at Cypress. Who can resist a big truck-sized inner tube with safety handles and ropes on a bumpy sliding course built for kids of all ages!

Skiing at Whistler-Blackcomb, North America's largest and foremost ski resort opens tomorrow. It is just an hour and a half from Nelson House, using the vastly improved Sea to Sky Highway. The resort offers 8100 acres of skiable terrain spread over two mountains and the town of 10,000 at their base. More than a vertical mile drop and runs of over seven miles in length. 38 lifts speed you to over 200 trails. The new Peak 2 Peak Gondola breaks records as the highest and longest unsupported span in the world. Travelling from mountaintop to mountaintop in just 11 minutes, the Gondola provides breathtaking views of three glaciers and the valley far below.

In 90 days or so, the Alpine Skiing events will take place on Whistler Mountain and include Downhill, Super G, Giant Slalom, Slalom, and Combined. Whistler Olympic Park, the Nordic Competition Venue is complete and will host all Nordic events: cross country skiing, biathlon, ski jumping, and Nordic combined events. The Whistler Sliding Centre on Blackcomb Mountain will host the Sliding events: Bobsled, Luge, and Skeleton events.

Me? I am more likely to be found partying at Whistler's gay ski-week, WinterPride, the first week of March.

For information and links to all of these and more of Vancouver's winter wonderland, please checkout the Attractions and Directions page on our website.

Vancouver Convention Centre 2 Opens

People come to conventions to be educated and inspired. At Expo'86 in Vancouver, the World Fair's Canadian Pavilion was designed for future use as Vancouver's iconic "Canada Place". The effect is of a huge sailing ship jutting out into the waters of Burrard Inlet. It is imaginative as it's design includes a convention centre, a hotel, a cruiseship terminal and even an IMAX theatre. At the time, the translucent, white glass-fibre fabric hung from five masts was technically advanced and served to create huge unobstructed interior spaces, flooded by natural light.

This week, Vancouver's NEW Convention Centre expansion opened to the public and for it's first conventioneers. I took in the show. Situated just west of Canada Place, along the new Coal Harbour Seawall, this building also juts out over the harbour. Seaplanes land and take off from the waters at it's side. Wraparound public walkways have added fresh new views of Vancouver's picture post card beauty. The world will soon receive plenty of televised views as the Convention Centre will be used as the Media Centre for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

The new Convention Centre's effect is of an angular, sharp-edged mountain with natural green, grassy slopes. The building is "green" in many more ways than one. The six acre(2.4 hectare) grass and wildflower roof is the largest living green roof in Canada. It is already home to thirty thousand bees and attracting nesting birds. Deep below, forty per cent of the foundation is resting on concrete piles driven into the seabed. Design features have been included to form a marine habitat for sea urchins, starfish, sea lettuce and Vancouver's friendly harbour seals.

The aesthetics are dominated by enormous glass walls that frame views of the harbour and the North Shore mountains. Inside, the awesome spaces are warmed by the generous use of BC. fir beams overhead and stacked BC hemlock walls(assembled by a robot, named Victoria). The unique seawater heating and cooling system makes highly efficient use of energy.

Are you coming to Vancouver?


Leave us a comment or question anytime. Always glad to hear from you!

Nelson House Bed and Breakfast- 2010 Olympics

Image courtesy of VANOC & CBC

Yes! Nelson House B & B has ONE LAST ROOM still available for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Our "Vienna" room is only CAD.$148 (+ 15 % tax)/nt. However, it MUST be rented for the MINIMUM 17 NIGHTS of the games from Feb.12 to Feb.28th (inclusive). Please see our website for details on the room and the rental procedure.

The Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC) today revealed their month-long transportation plan affecting downtown Vancouver and the highway corridor to Whistler. The map above indicates red security zones, yellow parking restrictions, blue 24 hour Olympics lanes for approved transit only, the closure of major roads such as Expo & Pacific Boulevards and the Georgia Viaduct. As well, most of Robson St., Granville & Beatty will also be closed to all vehicles to create pedestrian-only throughfares. The goal is to remove 30 to 50% of the normal downtown traffic. Needless to say, they are laying on lots of extra public transit options... a brand new Skytrain line from downtown to Richmond & the Airport, extra Skytrain cars on all other lines, a third Seabus, 180 new city buses....

See the mauve star on the map? If you were staying at Nelson House B & B, you could walk anywhere, enjoy the people-watching and forget the traffic hassles!

Vancouver dreamin'

Vancouver used to always be followed by "B.C." You know - British Columbia. It was because of the other Vancouver, in the state of Washington. I have noticed that the BC suffix has now been dropped. B.C. now designates a whole other subject, like British California or Bring Cash. The city has achieved standalone status.

Vancouver has grown up. She is young(c.1880s) by world standards but the world has begun to take notice. For a longtime, she was a provincial place, a rather rough town that grew into Terminal City. Terminal in the sense of the end of the road(as viewed from back East), as in a major rail, freight and port facility. Vancouver's reputation has suffered the envy of some other cities that have more history but less geography. For too long, Vancouver was all about setting - a city that leaned against a wall of mountains as she splashed her feet in the vast, mild Pacific. A surreal green rainforest with mist dripping from every limb. A westcoast experience derided as the Wet Coast. It was only with Expo'86, that the world was compelled to note the chutzpah of a gawky teenage city bold enough to invite everyone to come and see.

And they have come and seen. And many have bought a piece of paradise, a room with a view. Beauty, beauty everywhere. For some, that beauty has been reason enough to lay back and roll another one. For others, it has been a magnet that uprooted and drew them from half a world away. The world's languages fill the streets. Smart young people in sandals design the computer games that the world will play next year. They social network avidly, climb a mountain competitively and are as apt to take the bike to work as the BMW. Their world is plugged in, 24 hours and global.

Vancouver is now as fresh and dewy as this year’s Hollywood starlet. The city has great bones - the Coast Mountains soar over a glassy new skyline. The makeup is minimal and immaculate - the Pacific Ocean washes miles of chilled but sandy beach. Most attractive - for Vancouver’s turn in the spotlight (and to the delight of visitors) – this city is a friendly tease. She has become open-minded, hip, cosmopolitan and maybe a teensy bit pretentious.

Vancouver offers both sexy and becalming lifestyles. Canadians elsewhere trade down from high-powered careers and trade up to more expensive housing, just to be here, to go play outdoors, and yes, to smell the roses. Non-Canadians have ceased comparing the city to the mountains of Zurich, the bayside zaniness of San Francisco, the Pacific ports of Hong Kong and Sydney. Vancouver is unique. She is no longer just a pretty young thing. No where else do you hear people talking endlessly about "quality of life". Ultimately, this city knows that her inner beauty will define her and that remains a work in progress, a work of maturation. In 2010, she knows that the world will see an Olympic Vancouver with panhandlers outside the ice arena, homeless outside the many fine restaurants, the poor and deranged, the rich and deluded, side by side in "lotusland". Still, the city beckons - come and see!

Youtube videos courtesy of paulngstewart