I followed False Creek to its head, past the Olympic Village, which had been off limits to non-athletes during the events. This was my first chance to see it. A very nice trail had been constructed (or updated) along the waterfront, and walkers with and without dogs, joggers, bikers, roller-bladers, and moms pushing strollers all made heavy use of this lovely public green space.
To my right, it was easy to see where temporary staging areas must have been within the Village during the Games, since large swaths of land are now just empty lots alongside very nice looking brand new condos. In the center of one lot was a giant inukshuk, the symbol of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games.
After picking up my bus ticket, I consulted my map for the nearest Starbucks, which was only about 2 blocks away. I stepped inside it, but it looked like a commuter Starbucks and had only a few barstools for seating. I was looking for something more substantial to wait out the hours at. The next-nearest Starbucks was back the direction I had come from. So I headed back, but decided pass along the opposite side of the Village and see what was there. There was nothing much: old, nondescript buildings, workshops or former workshops of differing sorts, many of them with faded "for lease" signs out front. I walked along a street busy with cars, but not many pedestrians. The map was true, however, and there, in the bottom of a new condo/office building on the far edge of the Village was the promised Starbucks.
After killing a few hours there catching up on this and that, I walked back to the bus station. This time I decided to walk through the middle of the former Village and see what that was like.
It was weird. Eerie-weird, and not at all what I expected from passing by within blocks of it in each direction. Two blocks toward the water, and the trail was busy with human traffic, two blocks the other direction, the the street was busy with car traffic. In the middle of the former Village there was nothing: no cars, no people, no dogs, no kids. The street and sidewalks were equally empty.
I'd heard that the condos that were built for the Village were not selling well, and many had been converted to rentals, which also were not filling very fast. Most of the condos had the shades drawn, either to make the vacancies less obvious, or to keep down the air conditioning costs on hot days like today. A few occupied units had plants out on balconies, softly announcing, "Someone lives here." The scene was mostly like an empty movie set. Since it's Sunday, people aren't at work and kids aren't at school. But they aren't here either. As I came to a park within the Village I noticed the first sign of life. There was a single family with a child. A little later, as I got to the end of the last street, two adults on bikes rode in and a car left a parking garage. There was a sign for a London Drug, but where it was, I don't know.
It was like a ghost town, except that everything was brand new and perfectly landscaped. The thing is, this place must have been the hub of the palpable energy of nervous, overwhelmed, elated, disappointed, or just relieved athletes and their coaches and families. The streets and sidewalks must have been packed with teams in their matching gear showing their country of origin. I highly doubt cars were even allowed inside, on account of the thousands of people. I can't imagine a place with more emotion than the Olympic Village would have. And now, everyone's gone; they took their liveliness with them, and the new residents have not yet arrived. 
If we hadn't made the trip up to Vancouver to experience some of the Olympics, I doubt any of this would have occurred to me. I wouldn't have known the history of where I was, nor would I have experienced the spirit of the host city at its greatest hour. Now, here I was again, and there was nearly nothing that actually claimed that these few city blocks had even been the Village, nor marked its border or touted its past. Not a single set of Olympic rings were anywhere. Some "Vancouver 2010" flags remained, and a street was named "Athlete Ave," but that was about it. Except for the soft rustling of the leaves of newly-planted boulevard trees, there was only eerie silence, and the laughs of one child in a park.
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