Infrastructure

Vancouver has plenty of internet dining guides. Here's links to three of them:

DineHere.ca

Zagat

The problem with both of these is, they allow you to view all restaurants in British Columbia, or restaurants in specific municipalities, such as Burnaby, Richmond, West Vancouver, etc. They don't have a "Metropolitan Vancouver" or "Lower Mainland" category.

If you google "vancouver food blog", you'll get lots of matches. Here's three that look good:

Ho Yummy

Cheap Eats 2010

Nancyland, Vancouver Foodie Fun

Finally, I couldn't publish something like this without mentioning a few of my personal favourites:

Latin Quarter On Commercial Drive. Tapas, but Central American instead of Spanish. Live music several times a week, and reasonable prices

Favorito Pasta Trattoria, 552 W Broadway, Vancouver, (604) 876-3534

Tango 8 Grill Argentinian

Since I live in New Westminster, here's two more:

Indian Star Restaurant Has lunch buffet

Taverna Greka Great view, and very close to the Columbia Street Skytrain station

The Cultural Olympiad is shaping up as something big, especially if you have any money left after purchasing tickets to athletic events. You can see the schedule and complete information by clicking here.

The first piece of good news goes to people whose itinerary includes Whistler: a lot of the Whistler events are free.

Three highlights that caught my attention: Hal Willner's Neil Young Project on February 18, Steve Earle on January 23, and the Moscow State Chamber Choir on February 24.

The Neil Young Project, with Lou Reed as the headliner, is expensive; $59 and up. The Moscow State Chamber Choir is only $20. Steve Earle, a Country singer-songwriter who didn't come off the Nashville assembly line, is priced in the middle.

A site has been set up by VANOC for the legitimate re-sale of Olympics tickets. It starts here.

Ticket scalping is legal in Vancouver, but counterfeit tickets have been a problem at times. This legitimate re-sale site charges a commission of 20% on the face value of the ticket.

During the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, there was an office where holders of tickets they did not intend to use could turn them in for re-sale. The problem was, there was a platoon of professional scalpers in Lillehammer. They would be at the front the line when the re-sale tickets were put on sale; they would buy these re-sale tickets, and immediately try to scalp them.

TransLink, the agency that handles public transit for the Vancouver area, has made transit passes available that cover the entire six-week duration of the 2010 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. These passes start on February 8, and run through March 21. A one-zone adult pass costs $110, and covers buses, the Skytrain, and the SeaBus.

It's important to note that you can also buy a one-zone adult pass for the month of February for $73. You can also buy a book of ten "FareSavers", one-zone adult single tickets for $19. It's also important to note that if you're staying outside the Vancouver city limits, you will probably need more than one zone; the rule on this is, zones are in effect prior to 6:30 PM Monday-Friday.

Information about the 2010 Games Transit Pass is available here. This page also has a Fares & Passes link, which will take you to more useful info about transit for the 2010 Games.

Do your plans for the 2010 Olympics involve driving an RV to Vancouver? You'll be able to park it overnight in the Jericho Beach parking lot for $95 a night. Here's the story from CBC: Jericho Beach RV camp OK'd for Olympics.

Now, 95 bucks for a parking spot sounds like a lot of money to me, but I'm not an RV driver, so I don't have any idea of what goes for "reasonable" in this area. I know that local RV parks are charging $250 a night.

Wal*Mart usually allows people to park overnight in their parking lots for free, and the Wal*Mart off Highway 91 in New Westminster would work for this. (Some of the other Wal*Marts in the area are part of malls, so Wal*Mart doesn't own the parking lot.)

That aside, my suggestion is, try Craig's List. You should be able to get at least as good a deal as the Jericho Beach lot.

... you might want to make different ones.

At present, the ferry schedules for Vancouver Island. the Sunshine Coast, and Bowen Island are not going to be altered to accomodate people who want to come to Vancouver, Squamish, or Whistler for the day. And, if you want to stay overnight in Vancouver, good luck finding a hotel room.

Here's a story about this from Damian Inwood of Canwest News Service: Islanders face time crunch to reach Olympic events

The Nov. 9 issue of the Georgia Straight, a Vancouver weekly, contained an article by former radio talk show host David Berner with the title, "Who is Mr. Olympic Oval?"

I would love to give you a link to this article, but for unknown reasons, it doesn't appear on the Georgia Straight's site. However, Stephen Rees, an urban planner and a blogger, has put up some key excerpts from the article, along with some urban planning-oriented commentary. Here's where you can find it: Who is Mr Olympic Oval?

At the same time that millions of provincial and federal tax dollars are being spent to build new facilities for the 2010 Olympics (including a biathlon course), another level of government has voted to shut down one of the few facilities available in the Lower Mainland for target shooting.

This time, it's the Pacific Shooters Association in North Vancouver, and it's relevant to 2010 because it's used by Canada's biathletes. (In case you're not plugged into the sport of biathlon, it's cross-country skiing and rifle target shooting. It may seem silly at first glace, but it's a sport that originated with the Vikings, using bows and arrows instead of rifles.)

This decision was made by the Greater Vancouver Water District, a division of the Greater Vancouver Regional District. The Pacific Shooters Association uses property leased from the GVRD, and the GVWD decided not the renew the lease. The reasons given were environment and noise, but the three North Shore mayors on the commission voted against the closure.

After this closure takes place in 2008, the only remaining target shooting facility in the Vancouver area will be the one at Burke Mountain, north of Port Coquitlam.

Story from the North Shore News: GVWD shoots down PSA target range. There was a story on this in the July 5 Province, but it's subscriber-only.

The powers-that-be sure seem to be marking the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games as a case study in short-sighted thinking, nickel and diming, and the wrong-headed belief that corners cut won't show up on the big day. The most obvious example of Olympic stupidity from the Vancouver organizers (and there's been a few) is the decision to make the Olympic ski-jump facility a temporary structure.

Yes, that's right, they're going to spend a whole wack of cash designing this thing, smoothing the mountain around it, doing the engineering, trucking up the iron and wood and fiberglass and electronics, they'll build the entire thing so it's beautiful and world standard, then they'll use it for a few weeks before junking it all and selling it as scrap.

The March 17, 2006 issue of the Epoch Times includes this article: Vancouver Olympics Already Stirring Controversy. The primary focus is on the request from VANOC for another $110 million from the federal and provincial governments.