I was lucky enough to scoop up some very random Olympics tickets and the travel company I often use to visit many Korean festivals was running an event where we could stay for the Seollal ( Chinese New Year) long weekend, and they would take us to and from the various Olympic events.
After booking a spot and ready to spend my winter vacation back in the snow clearly I am a sucker for punishment after my New Years in the snow fail.
I do know now with certainty to make me a very miserable person put me in freezing conditions mix in some snow freeze my feet off, and I will be your worst nightmare. With that being said I wasn’t very excited about the trip, but I kept trying to be optimistic and knowing that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity that I could not refuse. So I was willing to suck it up in hopes of having a great time checking out some random winter sports like Curling, skeleton, and Biathlon that we ended up missing.
We stayed at the High1 Ski resort a lovely place excellent condos and hot tubs and ample ski time on the slopes for those adventurous enough to have fun on the slopes.
Winter and all its sports is just not for me no matter how many times I try to convince myself otherwise.
Friday night was our first event the women’s skeleton. So we took a shuttle to the event which was 2 hours away. Not having any expectations or really knowing anything we arrived excited to check this Olympics thing out.
It was fun seeing so many people excited representing their country but as night struck it got unbelievably cold, even after all the layers and hot packs stuck to our bodies. The cold won, and we felt defeated it was really no fun standing in the freezing cold while your feet feel like it’s about to fall off.
We found a spot crammed in a shack with hundreds of others all gathered around one heater. The winter Olympics would be fun they said…
We left and made our way back to the resort and only arrived at 2:30 am tired and cold our first attempt was a complete disaster, and we were determined to make day 2 better even though that meant catching the 6 am shuttle bus to make our curling event at 9am. Clearly when planning this we did not take into account the amount of time we would be sat on a bus. No point in crying over spilled milk we were going to have fun even if that meant drinking mimosas on the bus at 6am and having a breakfast beer, welcome to the Olympics.
It was nice to be warm and sit inside to watch the curling no offense to any of the players, but I think this sport is a little ridiculous a bunch of people sweeping, after watching it up close I did see the amount of strategy and precision involved. It’s not the most thrilling sport, and it was 9 am, and everyone was very quiet IÂ didn’t feel much of a vibe and I was fighting back the urge to fall asleep. So this time around we were warm but extremely bored.
Determined to make the most of this day we left in hopes we could snag some hockey tickets, but all were sold out, and the women’s hockey was in a completely different stadium, and we were not keen to make that mission and not find tickets. So we hung around the Olympic park visited the official merchandise superstore got some souvenirs.We didn’t do much planning ahead of time thinking that we would be able to figure things out when we arrived but not knowing where to go. Where the parties or viewing spots were was a dampener.
We tried to get into the Canada House but it was sold out, and we didn’t know we had to get tickets for it. We then walked around no man’s land and found a GS25 LIKE 7/11 got some beers and snacks and just hung about outside luckily the sun was shining so this was pleasant.
We then tried to research some more places but everything seemed so far away and tried to figure a plan, we bumped into some friends and just hang about the Olympic Park, and as soon as it turned to night it started freezing again. We just gave up and missioned back to our resort. This wasn’t as easy as we had thought an accident on one of the main roads caused hectic delays and lots of confusion luckily we managed to find the right shuttle bus and all the traffic was cleared, and we made it to our bus in time.
Olympic day 2 another fail, but we did try to have fun. All the commuting to and fro did really take its toll on us. The next day we packed up made our way back to the Olympic park, we went to the Czech Republic house and alas the kinda vibe we were looking for. We finally drank some excellent beers ate some sausage and hang out, saw some athletes before making our way back to Daegu.
So I didn’t really have many expectations going into this, but it was fun to have had the opportunity to go to the Winter Olympics something I would never have gotten a chance to do if I didn’t live here.Another bucket list item to tick off the list and another lesson learned I hate the cold and always do some research.
After the coldest winter of my life, it is finally getting a little warmer, and spring is on the horizon I cannot wait for many more pleasant trips ahead.
Peace Love & Happiness
Cherry ♥
