Olympic venues under construction in London (photo courtesy Chris Koop)

A Steinbach resident is just back from London, England and a tour of Olympic Summer Games facilities.

Chris Koop does some work for a sports travel company in Winnipeg and will be hosting tours at the games next summer. He says there's quite a buzz in London as people are getting excited about the event. "I took an Olympic venue tour so I got to see, first hand, the main Olympic venues in the east part of London. When you are standing, overlooking a construction site, and most of the stadium is up but everything around it is not completed yet, it's hard to imagine sometimes how it's going to be done in time but they assure everyone that everything will be done," said Koop.

Koop also hosted tours at the Beijing games in 2008. He says it's hard to compare the two sites because the London facilities are not yet completed. But he notes the buildings in Beijing, like the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube were absolutely stunning while in London they look more like North American sports stadiums. He adds the venues in London are much farther apart than in Beijing.

Koop says it won't be inexpensive to attend these games. He explains, "Hotel prices are getting pretty crazy already. It's an expensive city. The company that I work for sent a bunch of people out there and we all went to different restaurants and you're typically paying twice as much as you would here for a good meal."

Koop says London is a wonderful city, steeped in history, and there are a lot of other things for people to see and do while at the Olympics.

By the way, Koop says, laughingly, while in London last week, there were no sightings of Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, although some  members in their group were more interested in looking for her sister Pippa.

Centre court at Wimbledon, site for Olympic tennis (photo courtesy Chris Koop)