The Olympic Green - Part 1

It was actually sunny this afternoon, so I slipped out of the IBC at about 6pm for a quick walk about the Olympic Green. There are a number of truly amazing venues that the Chinese have built for these Games, and the two most prominent are right here in the Olympic Green.

The one you have probably already seen a lot of on TV is the "Bird's Nest" (technically called the "National Stadium"). It is a huge woven steel structure that seats 90,000 and that will be the home to the Opening and Closing ceremonies, as well as the Track and Field competitions.

The other amazing structure is the "Aquatic Cube" (or the "National Aquatic Centre") which looks like a giant bubble wrapped building. This will, naturally, host the swimming competitions. The other cool part about this building is that it can be lit up in different colors at night.

Also nearby is the "National Indoor Stadium" (there is no nifty nickname for this building, which is too bad, really, because the official names are rather boring). This building will house the gymnastics competitions.

These are all within a short walk of the International Broadcast Centre where I work (well, a relatively short walk, given the huge size of these buildings). The IBC is the biggest of the lot, as you can see here:

There is a lot more to see and show you in the Olympic Green, so I will definitely be coming back to take more pictures. While I was out walking today, there were hundreds of people outside the Bird's Nest who were participating in the full dress rehersal for the Opening Ceremonies.

I am watching the rehersal right now in HD, and it is visually stunning, so you will NOT want to miss it (at least until they start the parade of athletes, which gets a little tedious after a while). The nice part of watching the rehersal is that there is no commentary, so the meanings of the visual themes are left to your imagination, and you also don't have to listen to often useless patter. The unfortunate part is that the vidoe has "NOT FOR BROADCAST" overlayed across the bottom third of the screen.

I was going to play spoiler and tell you what's happening, but there is no way I can do justice to the visual spectacle with a text description, so you'll just have to watch it yourself!