Twilight, Travel, and Treats

More Olympic Mascot Toys

Mr. TC made my day yesterday. Not only did he take the kids out while I stayed home but he came home bearing gifts.

He got me the only McDonald's Olympics Toys that I had been missing.

Goalie Quatchi moves limbs up/down when rolled

Luge Quatchi

When rolled Luge Quatchi gets Asian eyes (yes, I can say it because I'm Chinese)

I had to line up the whole collection and take a pic - I was overflowing with giddiness.

This is the suggested lineup from the McDonald's toy "instructions." I'm a sucker for manuals of any kind.

I couldn't help but take a pic with mini-Edward

Quatchi teaching Edward the 2 Man Luge

Seriously 2 Man Luge is a real event. It's not some twisted gay porn activity.

See?

Olympics Mascots On Ice

Remember how in my Olympic hockey post my eldest got to meet Quatchi and Miga and I was sad that our youngest one missed it? Well, we pulled the youngest from school on a sunny Thursday to rectify that situation.

I had just bought the boys some Olympics Mascots hats since they were 50% off at the shop next to my office - score!

This is a photo of my youngest sporting sunglasses and loving his Miga hat. Funny how you can't tell if he's napping or not under all that.

My gangsta Miga boy

He really had fallen asleep. Even the 4 year old gangsta has an entourage to carry him around.

Mr. TC gets a workout being the entourage

As promised we trudged through the throng of people and made it to Robson Square - better known as GE Plaza during the Olympics. They've got a free outdoor skating rink with $3 skate rentals. A good deal and I'm happy they brought this rink back after many years without it.

Vancouver Art Gallery all dolled up - looks like Vivienne Tam did it don't you think?

You know Mother Nature has a strange sense of humour when there are cherry blossoms out during the 'Winter' Olympics. She usually saves them for the Cherry Blossom Festival in the spring.

By the way, there is a Zip Trek line going above Robson Square. It's about 6 stories over this major social hub in Vancouver and people travel over 550 feet across. And you get to zoom in the sky across all these people while strapped into a harness for free. Which of course means massive lines (like 4 hours and over).

Hope the logos don't wear off the glass too quickly

Anyways, back to the Mascot skate. Canadian kids spend a lot of time at the ice rink. Thank goodness they love Zambonis and any other form of ice cleaning machine. It keeps them busy while waiting.

After they cleared the ice they put up an inflatable staging area at the other end of the rink. Thank goodness we guess properly where to stand because you couldn't see anything from the other side.

See those people behind the barricade? Sucks to be them

Finally the mascots came out and there were major cheers. Most of us had been standing for about 40 minutes, not too bad but a long wait for the kids.

They each did a lap walking around and hugging almost every kid who was by the rail. It was awesome! My son was in heaven and had his arms out the whole time just waiting for his hug.

First came Quatchi

He is gigantic

Acting oh so shy - they've got the meek Asian bit down pat

Then Sumi

Sumi totally hams it up for the camera

Doesn't it look like he's giving you the finger?

And lastly, my sons favourite, Miga!

Too busy trying to keep my son from climbing over the rail to take a good photo

They eventually came up with a dance that seemed to fit Vancouver. Lots of blues, greens, and sealife. The costumes were quirky but the kids loved them.

These glowing guys remind me of earplugs

Jellyfish

Hockey Quatchi came out to play too

My son left with an awesome smile on his face but the one question all the kids had was "Where is Mukmuk?" I told my son "Mukmuk is having a nap because he's so little." He seemed to buy it.

Here are some around Robson Square pics that I thought to throw in as well

Can you tell I love these hats?

The entrance to Pacific Centre Shopping Mall gets turned into an igloo

With matching polar bears outside

Throng of people at GE Plaza just hanging out

And my favourite sign for the day should have been this - the biggest Canadian Flag in the world

World's Biggest Canadian Flag corner of Georgia and Howe Street

Or even this one



But instead it was this one - it made me go back through the crowd with my cell phone.



Okay, going to Women's Hockey Semi-final tomorrow night with Mr. TC and both kids. Wish us luck.

I love the Olympic Mascots. Ever since they were released over 2 years ago I've been seeing their merchandise for sale and working hard to resist. The most comprehensive collection is sold at The Bay and Zellers. They sell tons of things including pins.

Miga Mogul pin in honour of our First Gold Medal on Canadian soil

So where to get Olympic Mascot stuff for cheap?

Well, I've been going to McDonald's so often it's making me sick. But I am on a mission to collect all of the Olympic Mascot toys so it's worth the extra trips. So far this is our lineup

They connect up together

You've met Snowboarding Miga who wiggles when she's rolled

Quatchi & Miga in a bobsleigh that moves up/down when rolled

Sumi alpine skiing wiggling when rolled

Sumi almost looks majestic

Miga figure skating twirls when rolled

Quatchi ski jumping moves up/down when rolled

Such a funny angle for the ski jump

Sumi playing ice sledge hockey moving his stick when rolled

I'm missing the last two - Quatchi goalie and Quatchi luge. I think the goalie will be hard to find considering it's our national obsession. Won't hurt to keep looking...

Speaking of looking, I was staring at the McDonalds display I noticed something that I know won't end up as a toy.

Miga doing skeleton

For those of you summer sports people, Miga is doing skeleton which is like luge but face first.

Doubtful that McDonald's will make a toy where you can slam Miga's face straight into something but if they made it I would want to collect it too.

On a local note, I found the cheapest price so far for Olympic Mascot plush with red mittens.

Mukmuk wearing famous red Olympic mittens

Save-On Foods has them for $9.99 with your Save-On Card. Better than the $16 minimum I've seen everywhere else.

Okay, lastly, let's see what Mini-Edward got up to today.

More bobsledding practice

Miga teaches Mini-E how to figure skate

Next post, more Olympics touring and Opening Ceremonies.

This is the first of a couple of posts about our pre-Opening Ceremonies trek through Vancouver. We've spent the last 7 years building up for the world and I thought it would have been a shame to not showcase some of the interesting things to do. I'll be getting to my view of the Opening Ceremonies as a spectator inside the stadium very soon.

Today was the day of the Olympics Opening Ceremonies. I had hummed and hawed about going to selling these tickets. They would have gone for over $750 a piece but then the "it's a once in a lifetime thing" phrase kept creeping into my head. In the end after someone called and offered us over $1000 each and I declined that's when I realized "well, I guess we're going after all."

I kissed the kids goodbye for the day and left Mini-E & B with the Mascots. The Mascots assured me they would show our New Moon guests a good time.
I think they were planning on teaching them how to bobsled. I think Edward would love it since he seems to love going fast.

Mini E and Mini B learn how to bobsled with Miga and Quatchi

That morning a few of the moms from school had lined up at 4am to watch Michael Buble on the TODAY show. Apparently even at 4am there were about 1000 women on Grouse Mountain. Our friends got to ride the special staff gondola on the way down with Michael - a full 10 minutes with him trapped in a confined space with a few hungry moms - poor guy!

Click here for Youtube video clip from inside Grouse Mountain

Or click here to go to the MSNBC Concert Series site.

My husband and I hadn't taken the bus for ages and it was great to feel like tourists in our own city. We ended up taking the bus and Seabus (our mini ferries that take 15 minutes to cross from North Vancouver to Vancouver).

Seabus from North Vancouver to downtown Vancouver

All public transit is free on the day you have an Olympic Event ticket. You just show your event ticket as proof of payment. Most of the time the bus driver doesn't even check anymore because there are hoards of people getting on.

We arrived at Waterfront Station which is the major transport hub where the Seabus, Skytrain (our subway), West Coast Express (train from the suburbs out east) all intersect. Even the helicopters land there and the float planes take off from three blocks away.

Waterfront Station transit hub in downtown Vancouver

I get obsessed about cute things. For years I was obsessed with the whole Winnie the Pooh clan. Now that the Olympics mascots are around in full force I'm always looking out for the cute critters. I was happy to see them greeting us at Waterfront.

Quatchi & Miga in a Samsung display

To figure out where to spend our day downtown, I went to check out my husband's blog Averagetraveller.com. He has a link on there near the bottom of his latest post for a full listing of free stuff to do during Olympics.

You can also go to the Vancouver2010.com website on your iphone and it will ask if you want to download the free app.

Worth the free download for the cute Olympic app icon

We used the map feature to find cultural events nearby and decided on the Northern House a few blocks away.

Canada's Northern House

Canada's Northern House is devoted to all things from the three northern Canadian territories (up north they have territories, not provinces but in my head they are equivalent - I'm sure the Canadian geography people will correct me here).





They had beautiful Inuit art and carvings.





I liked a few of the wall scripts. It was a pleasant sanctuary from the chaos of downtown.




The freakiest things were the animals. Especially the polar bear. It must have been about 7 feet tall so not gigantic but it still gave me a scare.

Add caption

Reminds me of the polar bear from Lost

Royal Canadian Mint Pavilion

2010 Olympic Gold Medal

Next we headed a couple blocks away to the Royal Canadian Mint Pavilion where the Olympic Medals were on display. For a very limited time, I believe you could actually touch them if you were willing to line up (a friend of mine today was lining up for 3 hours outside). People can learn the story behind how the medals are made. The Mint website has a really nice interactive tour about how they're made.

Click to see how the medals are made

At first I thought our Vancouver 2010 medals were odd because they were wavy and definitely had a 3D feel. I've gotten used to them and agree that they reflect the waves and mountains of our area. Now I love that they have the matte finish too.

They had a million dollar gold coin on display. I hadn't heard of this before but apparently it's in the Guinness Book of World Records.


After standing in the line to see the medals for twenty minutes (and having not moved more than 5 feet) we decided to leave and go for lunch.

We ventured onto the newest branch of the Skytrain called the Canada Line. So shiny and new when I'm on this it makes me feel like we are on vacation either in Hong Kong or London.

One interesting thing I'd never noticed before was that the garbage cans were transparent. Makes a lot of sense and I guess that is part of the almost billion dollar security budget for the 2010 games.

Clear garbage cans

We ended up in Yaletown which is downtown Vancouver's newest hip district that used to be full of warehouses. Now it's full of the city's best restaurants and clothing shops as well as notoriously bad parking. The parking is a bit better now but the Canada Line has helped make this area more accessible.

Casa Italia

We were hungry and headed for the Casa Italia or what we called the "Italy House" at the Roundhouse Community Centre in Yaletown. I came out of there with a free cheese hat and lanyards, some brochures, but no food. They say they have wine, ham, and cheese samples but there was no schedule posted.

All I wanted was to taste the cheese

But I ended up with a nice toque instead.

They had a nice Kinder display with chocolates but still nothing I could taste.


They had an Italian food info station/bar setup but nothing to offer us for food. The girls were too busy chatting in Italian and laughing to serve anybody.


Leaving the pavilion I was struck by this very pink booth.


I don't know what it was for because no one seemed to want to tell us but I thought it was pretty so deserved a photo. See how they were standing around but not very helpful. We left feeling hungry.

I hope the Italy vibe in June is more welcoming.

Next up I'll probably do a post about what Olympic activities Mini-Edward and the Olympic Mascots got up to.

More Mascot posts to come

I'll also show you the Coca-Cola Pavilion too where I got to take a picture holding an Olympic torch!