Day 5 - Crowded Street and Zip Lines - Ferry Date and Nanaimo Bars Yum!

Today we ate ate and ate. And shopped and bought out Lululemon. You might even catch me wearing a one-piecer that I fell in love with while I was there. The owner lives in Vancouver. I heart that store so much. After spending more money I don't have we met Uncle Tanner at Greens and Gourmet, a vegetarian restaurant that we loooooooove in the city. It was equally as wonderful as I remember it. They even had a tofu chocolate cream pie in honor of Canada and her olympians. It looked great but after all the good food I couldn't stuff anything else down my throat.



Trekking miles around downtown Vancouver is the perfect thing to do after you have stuffed your face at an epic Vegetarian restaurant. But not before you buy the local Canadian Costco out of Canadian chocolate. We have been getting this stuff for YEARS for every Christmas and birthday present. It is the best... AND I did promise several of you presents so I hope this picture is getting you excited...

We left our car at Costco because there was literally NO parking in downtown Vancouver. Walking around Robson Street and the main Olympic Village area was amazing. And very crowded. The drunk crazies were still out in full swing but not as bad as the night before. There were a lot of families and patriots around though. There were also a lot of people wearing every Olympic pin you could possibly think of on any free bit of clothing they had. My dad couldn't resist several of them so now we have a collection. Through the midst of the very saturated crowd where I wasn't even sure where my sisters were from one moment to the next, I heard my name several times from an unfamiliar voice across the crowd. I looked over and saw my good friend from High School Chris Hollander and his wife Marianne and family. He also has the cutest little girl named Noah. Here we are reunited again:

Other cool things downtown - a portable water machine that we drank out of. Of course my father, the "Green-Friendly" guy ran over and started chasing it down the street to try and drink from one of the faucets. Carly started yelling after him because she thought it was beer. Oh my sweet, innocent sister:).

Something that I didn't do which I would have LOVED to do was the Zip Line over the Olympic Village. It was FREE! And the line was also 7 hours long on average. My cousin Lisa said that she bribed someone for her spot in line which I totally wouldn't do but I did have crowd anxiety even trying to make my way over there. I got a great picture though with my measly little camera... Oh we also met Andy Spandy who you see here. Great guy. Great spandex. Great dancing.


After that Rogan got tickets to go see the short track speed skating and we went with our cousin Aaron to the best Vegetarian burrito place I have ever been to - Budgies Burritos. All of you naysayers that hated on me for being a hippy vegetarian would have a heyday in this place. The walls were adorned with pictures of naked hippies in the wilderness and each table had a Trivial Pursuit card box from the 1960s. It also had a rockin' "We're Open" sign - pictured below. If you go to Vancouver you have GOT to go there. As my dad would say "It is SO Canadian".








We hit the jackpot after dinner though. Possibly the highlight of the day was finding the sacred "Nanaimo Bar" at the coffee shop next door to Budgies. Alexa has been talking about these since we landed in the place. Here is how much we enjoyed them:




The night ended with another round of fighting crowds in downtown Vancouver. We did some last minute shopping - yes roomies and JD that means you are getting something Canadian in a few days!!! We also tried to Karaoke in a Korean BBQ place where we also met some really cool Aussies, and tried on all the nail polish colors at this really cool store I can't remember the name of.







The night ended with the same light show we saw at the beginning of our adventure. Symbolizing the circle of life of my trip to the Olympics and my father's homeland of Vancouver, BC. OK that was so cheesy... One more day to come. I hope you have enjoyed it so far!