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The Vancouver Convention Centre is of course, a convention centre in Vancouver. The old name was the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre (I believe… or else Vancouver Trade & Convention Centre) but everyone just refered to it as Canada Place. An addition to the Convention Centre, the West Building (which is more commonly known as the Convention Centre), was completed this year.

If that was confusing…

OLD Section: Canada Place (real name: Vanc Convention Centre ; East Building)
NEW Section: Convention Centre (real name: Vanc Convention Centre; West Building)

Yes, they’re both called the same thing, differentiated by what side of the earth they face in relation to one another or whatever. Oh how I hate these names. Forget the formal names; just go by what everyone calls them.

In November 2004, construction of the expansion began. It was partly built to be the media and broadcast centre for the 2010 Olympics although it will be used as a convention centre (of course) after the Games.

Here’s a funky photo… The sails of Canada Place are seen here.

This one’s taken from Vancouver Lookout (will be featured soon). Again, this is Canada Place with its famous 5 sails.

This isn’t a great photo, but if you look at the green patch (no, not Stanley Park; the brighter, smaller patch of green), you’ll see that the roof of the Convention Centre is in fact green. It’s a “living room” with native plants and apparently a bee yard.

The expansion of the Convention Centre consists of 340 849 square feet (31 665 square metres) of space.

What a modern design. The building was actually built over 40% water (therefore 60% on land).

As you can see, the inside is just HUGE. I don’t even know what’s what. The escalators are super tall and it all just looks really cool. There’s definitely more to the building than just what’s shown here.

Of course, that’s what you’d expect from a building that plans to host thousands of the best events ever.

The Tourism Vancouver Info Centre is right by Canada Place and the Convention Centre. There’s really nothing interesting about it (for locals) except for the fact that you can buy discounted tickets to random plays or something. I do like to go there from time to time and pick up some tourist magazines and brochures and whatnot. You can also book hotel rooms among other things.

Upcoming…

I find this place awfully boring compared to Science World, but it has this cool king crab sitting outside its entrance. This is the H.R. MacMillan ________ Centre. What’s the blank? (Hint: Maybe the shape of the building will help you out…)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 8:45 pm and is filed under Photos, Staycations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.