Yesterday I headed out to Vancouver with my two sisters. D really wanted to go to the Royal Canadian Mint Pavilion and when we arrived, there were two line-ups. We weren’t aware of this at first, so we lined up in the first line that we say (which snaked around the entire block and rounded a corner). This line was for viewing the Olympic medals, as well as getting to touch them, and the rest of the pavilion.
That line up was an estimated 7.5 hours – just for viewing the medals, on top of everything else!
We switched to the second line up, as that was 45 minutes to an hour wait (we waited for an hour and maybe 20 minutes). During this wait, J stayed in the line while D and I walked across the street to get food from Subway – solid food! I’m so happy, haha.
This was the insane lineup. On the right was the ‘shorter’ line for the pavilion, sans medals. On the left is the massive lineup (7.5 hours!) to see and touch the medals (wearing gloves!) as well as the rest of the pavilion.

Super insane lines for the Royal Canadian Mint Pavilion.
I got to see some really beautiful coins – there are so many. I also learned that the Royal Canadian Mint has made currency for over half of the world’s countries, including the United States of America at one point. Plus, the mint runs 24/7, making new coins all the time. I thought this was really cool. All the ‘limited run’ coins are made in Ottawa (they only produce ~8,000 coins per day), while the general minting occurs in Winnipeg, Manitoba (and they produce a lot).
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