from Bruce Arhur of the National Post at Canada.com.

But the hotels are where the Russian Games are visibly straining at the seams. In the Ekaterininsky Kvartal hotel, the elevator is broken and the stairway is unlit, with stairs of varying and unpredictable heights.

Outside the Chistya Prudy, there is a bag of concrete in a palm tree, leaking grey down the trunk. Inside, some of the electrical outlets are just plates screwed into drywall.

Sports Illustrated’s Brian Cazeneuve had to clamber through a window to get out of his hotel on Tuesday morning, since the doors were all unexpectedly locked. Chris Stevenson of the Ottawa Sun was without electricity for the first day.

My Postmedia colleague Cam Cole’s bathtub came loose from the wall, and therefore rocks like a ship. He has a shower curtain, though. In the Rosa Khutor section of the mountains, Stacy St. Clair of the Chicago Tribune was told by the front desk that if the water worked, “do not use on your face because it contains something very dangerous.” When it did come out of the tap, it looked like a lot like cloudy urine.

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added 10:56am, from Neil Davidson of the CP at Yahoo,