Beijing Olympics

Of all the places we were excited about on our trip, we were so pumped to attend the Olympics in Beijing!

Although I had been there before, the city was transformed for this event. I was accustomed to terrible air quality, dirty streets and lots of hassling in tourist areas -- they were all gone. The traffic was terrific (no one was allowed to drive) and everywhere we went was clean and hassle-free! I don't know if the government killed all the trouble makers or just temporarily relocated them, but it was terrific.

It was a poor time, however, to sightsee in the city. We were able to catch The Great Wall before the games, but found that most other places of importance were closed or severely restricted (or closed for private viewings for dignitaries).

But it was the games we were there for after all, so we didn't mind! We originally had tickets to gymnastics, archery and handball. We ended up selling the archery and handball and buying weightlifting instead. Gymnastics was great to watch, if not a little difficult. Watching on TV spoils you -- you miss all the crappy people and get a nice close-up shot of the good stuff. Watching live takes some getting used to. Everything happens simultaneously and you really have to pick what you watch and what to sacrifice. We were constantly going "floor," "look at beam!" and "holy cow that guy has big muscles!" ... sorry, but it's true.

We also watched the US women's team totally melt down during the team prelims, but not without a lot of screaming and cheering on our part (some news articles even mentioned our rowdy section.) That coupled with China's cheating lead to a silver. :(

Weightlifting was very fun to watch - women's no less. You get to sit very close and it's very intense. The gold wasn't decided until the very last lift and the crowd went nuts. We also get to see the medal ceremony which was neat.

The bad side -- the food! I guess McDonald's has an exclusive contract to provide food in the Olympic villiage so there was one, and only one place to eat -- Mc'Ds. Having nothing but fast food while watching the best athletics in the world is an odd experience.

In the future, we'd like to attend more Olympics, but Beijing will always be our first.