The Celebration Of Light
On Saturday evening we went down to English Bay to watch the fireworks at the HSBC sponsored Celebration Of Light. The event has been running in Vancouver since 1990 and is seen as one of the most prestigious competitions for firework designers worldwide.
We had arranged to meet up with friends there but we got lost on the way and ended up arriving there at 9:50pm, 10 minutes before it was all about to start! Once we got there we realized it was going to an impossible task to find anyone, it was dark and there were hundreds of thousands of people in attendance. The night was China themed and it was the event finale, the previous nights had been Canada, UK and South Africa themed. It was high tide so very few people were sitting on the beach but we found a good spot on the pathway along the edge of the bay which was not bad seemings though we got there very late.
We didn't really expect it to be as great as it was, we've seen plenty of fireworks but nothing like that before in our lives. It was visually and acoustically stunning and lasted for about 25 - 30 minutes. Team China really pulled out the stops to make it a fantastic show. Downtown was completely packed afterwards, I have never seen crowds so big. This is probably one reason a lot of locals who've seen it all before opt to stay away but for us it was a small price to pay for watching such a great display. We did give up trying to get the SkyTrain home though as the lineups were massive so in the end we just jumped in a taxi!
I took some video footage which you can watch below which may seem good but doesn't really do the fireworks justice, it was even better in person.
