During our recent trip to Vancouver, BC for the 2010 Winter Olympics, we tried lots and lots of different restaurants. One of the highlights was Incendio, a pizza place in Gastown. Jennifer's pizza and my chicken calzone were both terrific. I tried a Stanley Park Amber ale which I enjoyed very much. Service was super [...]

During our recent trip to Vancouver, BC for the 2010 Winter Olympics, we tried lots and lots of different restaurants. One of the highlights was Incendio, a pizza place in Gastown.

Jennifer's pizza and my chicken calzone were both terrific. I tried a Stanley Park Amber ale which I enjoyed very much. Service was super friendly (a clear trend at almost every place we went) and they happily changed the big-screen's channel to the snowboard cross event we wanted to watch (though there weren't too many other people in the restaurant at the time).

If we'd been in Vancouver any longer I'm sure we would have gone back at least one more time. Highly recommended.

So much for the daily updates. I have been taking an awful lot of pictures and video (with my Flip mini) but various events have conspired to either prevent or discourage me from actually posting. Fireworks followed lighting of the Olympic cauldron at Canada Place. We attended Ladies Moguls on Saturday and Mens Moguls on [...]

So much for the daily updates. I have been taking an awful lot of pictures and video (with my Flip mini) but various events have conspired to either prevent or discourage me from actually posting.

Fireworks followed lighting of the Olympic cauldron at Canada Place.

We attended Ladies Moguls on Saturday and Mens Moguls on Sunday at Cypress Mountain. There’s more to say about Cypress Mountain but I’m not going to go into it here because it’ll only raise my blood pressure. Do a Google News search for “Cypress Mountain” and you’ll get the gist.

Canadian Moguls star Jennifer Heil prepares for her silver-medal winning run.

We’re persevering, though, and have replaced most of the canceled tickets with other events in town. Mostly hockey. We’ll be seeing a lot of hockey, both Womens and Mens. Speaking of which, why are the skiing events for women called “Ladies” but the hockey events are called “Womens”?

Face-off near the end of Womens USA vs. Russia hockey at UBC Thunderbird Arena.

The aspect of this trip that’s making all the ticketing troubles fade away is the restaurant and bar scene here in Vancouver. The Gastown area, where we’re staying, is almost nothing but pubs, restaurants, bars, etc for several blocks in every direction.

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Not to mention many, many more places in the downtown area and other neighborhoods. We’ve been here six days, have been to a minimum of two different places per day (no repeats) and there’s no end in sight. At some point I’ll list them all here; I have saved all the receipts both for reference and to apply for GST refund when we get home.

The lights of Gastown as viewed from near the Gassy Jack statue.

There’s plenty to do outside of eating, drinking and the occasional Olympic event, of course. VANOC has set up two “LiveCity” locations, one very close to us in the downtown area and one a bit further away in Yaletown. We found ourselves near the Yaletown location on Tuesday night and stuck around for a while to watch some event coverage, medal ceremonies and a musical act. One of the songs they played might be familiar to longtime Disneyland fans…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3txwe0oH_54]

Today is an off day, with no events scheduled (or canceled…) so we’re doing some more exploring. Vancouver is much like San Francisco in that it’s very walkable, but unlike San Francisco the hills are merely “hills” and not “nearly vertical summits”. Public transit is free to visitors during the Games and we’ve used that a few times, but are mostly walking from place to place.

I’ll continue adding pictures to this photo album every couple of days, and do blog updates when I can. You might be interested in following my Twitter feed at least for the duration; most of what ends up in blog posts is Tweeted live as it happens.

After two years of planning and two days of traveling, we are finally here, and the Games start tonight! Jennifer standing in front of the Molson Canadian Hockey House We flew from San Jose to Seattle on Wednesday morning and took the Amtrak Cascades from Seattle to Vancouver yesterday. We’re staying at a condo rented [...]

After two years of planning and two days of traveling, we are finally here, and the Games start tonight!

Jennifer standing in front of the Molson Canadian Hockey House

We flew from San Jose to Seattle on Wednesday morning and took the Amtrak Cascades from Seattle to Vancouver yesterday. We’re staying at a condo rented by someone Jennifer found on a Web site set up for Vancouver residents who planned to be out of town and wanted to rent their homes to visitors. The place we’re staying is in between Gastown and Chinatown and just a couple of short blocks from BC Place, the stadium complex where most of the in-town events will be held.

The torch relay passed right in front of our place!

Vancouver has a ton of great restaurants and so far we’ve visited three:

• SteamWorks Brewing Co
• Lamplighter Pub
• Smart Mouth Cafe (where this entry is being written)

We haven’t made any dining reservations, instead relying on the great likelihood that with so many places available, we’ll surely get in somewhere.

The opening ceremony is tonight! No, we didn’t spend upwards of $1000 each for tickets, but there will be lots of public spaces to see it live.

There will be many more posts and pictures in the next two weeks.

Yesterday we drove home from Lake Tahoe, and, with inspiration I can describe as well-intentioned but mistaken in retrospect, decided to take US-50 instead of I-80 (on which we’d driven to Tahoe). Here’s the route:View Larger MapThe whole point of the last-minute Tahoe trip was to get some snow, which we missed completely on the [...]

Yesterday we drove home from Lake Tahoe, and, with inspiration I can describe as well-intentioned but mistaken in retrospect, decided to take US-50 instead of I-80 (on which we’d driven to Tahoe). Here’s the route:

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The whole point of the last-minute Tahoe trip was to get some snow, which we missed completely on the New Year’s road trip. So, says I, checking the Caltrans road conditions site, US-50 seems to be clear with no restrictions and it’s the scenic route. Let’s try that.

We got as far as South Lake Tahoe and then, wow, sudden stop. I rechecked Caltrans and saw that chains were now required for a portion of highway 50 through Eldorado National Forest. Since we were in Jennifer‘s Subaru Forester, with full-time all-wheel drive, we didn’t actually need to install the chains but had purchased some just in case some well-meaning CHP officer insisted we have them.

I really didn’t know what was holding up traffic, but later I determined that we covered the next 25 miles in a little under five hours. It wasn’t accidents, though there were a few. It wasn’t severe weather, as that didn’t start until we were well up in the mountains. It wasn’t chain-on areas—those were pretty well organized off to the side and not really blocking the road. I think it was mostly just volume of traffic combined with less than competent drivers. Think of how badly the average person drives in the rain, and then double or triple that for snow and ice conditions.

Anyway, Jennifer was driving so I was fiddling with my phone—Tweeting, checking road conditions, getting news, the usual. For some very odd reason, although I had good coverage through most of the drive, my Tweets didn’t arrive until many hours later and, of course, were all out of order. I’ve reassembled the correct timeline here:

• Checked out & heading home via I-50.
• Correction: US-50, not I-50. I’m so embarrassed.
• No rain here (outside S. Lake Tahoe on US-50) just snow. Lots and lots of snow.
• It’s snowing sideways.
• Making average 4mph. Whee.
• Live video: http://qik.com/smartwatermelon (archived video clips here)
• There is something ever so slightly surreal about a Mexican cantina in an alpine-style building in a snowstorm. (it was El Papagayo Grill & Cafe, and we stopped for a quick snack and restroom break)
• Close to white-out.
• Cars & trucks skidding out as we descend.
• We’ve gone from snow to rain.
• Annnnd now back to snow.
• Torrential rain in Placerville.
• I think my Tweets are not going through.
• I suspect a whole load on on-the-road blathering will show up sooner or later.
• HOME.

The trip home took around eight hours, and for comparison it was fewer than four to get there on I-80. But hey, snow!

The Waffler! The Alton Brown / Good Eats version, not the Dane Cook / Mystery Men version. I wore this costume (created by Jennifer) to Mickey's Halloween Treat at Disney's California Adventure and then to Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, both in October 2007. The costume was extremely successful–which I [...]

The Waffler! The Alton Brown / Good Eats version, not the Dane Cook / Mystery Men version. I wore this costume (created by Jennifer) to Mickey's Halloween Treat at Disney's California Adventure and then to Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, both in October 2007. The costume was extremely successful–which I measured by "anyone actually recognizing the character"–several people did at both events.

The Waffler's mission is to save the world the disappointment from store-bought frozen waffles.