Living the glamorous Olympic experience

There's a lot about the Olympic experience that is different than what I do in my regular life. But there's also a lot of things that are the same.

Today, brought one of those wonderful experiences as I realized it was time to do my laundry. I should mention that I hate doing laundry at home, never mind when I'm away from home. In Sochi, my first Olympics, there was a laundry service in the media center and I simply brought my laundry in and they did it there. A slight problem arose when it didn't come back on time and I was scheduled to leave, but it all worked out. In PyeongChang, we had washers and dryers in the basement of our building in the media village. In Tokyo, my hotel had washers and dryers in the lobby area and in Beijing, the hotel had a laundry service.

This time around, there was no other option than to go out and find a laundromat. I did a quick search on my phone and found a laundromat not too far from the hotel, so I put all my dirty laundry in my small suitcase and wheeled it up the road to the laundromat. However, once I got there, it turned out they didn't take credit cards and I had left my cash in the hotel. 

So, back to the hotel I went, grabbed my cash and made my way back up the road to the laundromat. As it turned out, the bill reader on the machine didn't work, so not only did it not take cards, it didn't take paper cash either.

Back on the phone, I found another laundromat a few blocks away, so off I went down the road and found the other laundromat (which was nicer). Everything at the Olympics appears in French and English, which is obviously helpful, but laundromats in the questionable areas outside of Paris don't really have English translations, so it took me a little bit to figure out how to work everything (money goes in one machine, laundry in another), but eventually it all got in the machines and after a pretty long wait, everything got washed and dried.

I made my way back to the hotel and headed out with a trip to the golf venue on the list to start the day and a trip to the BMX racing track nearby after that. And hopefully I don't have to do any more laundry before I get home.


A glamorous Friday morning at the Olympics involved watching washing machines. Living the dream.

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