19:51 Wednesday, December 12 2004

happy fun day

I woke up this morning expecting yet another day stuck at home. Instead Denise was feeling sick, and was nice enough to let me take David out for the day. We took BART into the city. David loves trains (calls them 'choo-choo'), and he enjoyed the ride on BART. We got off at the Powell St station, and walked first to the new Apple store. This is a beatiful store. There's a glass staircase running up the middle, with a huge skylight above it which bathes much of the store in sunlight. They had a bank of older iMacs setup for children to play with, and david had alot of fun playing with the keyboard and mouse. He also played with a few ipods briefly.
Next we went to the Virgin Megatore directly across the street. David and I listened to some music with the headphones, and he also watched a few minutes of a Simpsons episode.
We walked up the street, to where I thought FAO Schwartz used to be (even the sign was still there), but it was one of those cheesy Xmas stores. We crossed the street and went over to Crate & Barrell, and david had fun trying out all the couches and chairs.
After that we walked up the street to Chinatown. David was somewhat perplexed by the surroundings. We then cut back over a few blocks and walked through the Hyatt hotel. David liked the huge xmas trees throughout the lobby, as well as a large wodden train-set.
Next we walked through Union Square. David had a blast chasing after the pigeons and screaming 'birds go!' at them. We then cut through Macy's on the other side of the square, and walked down Powell again. Power is closed to vehicular traffic for the last block before Market, so that only pedestrians and the trolley are permitted. David liked the trolley, especially when it rang its bell. There's also the trolley turn-around station at the end of the street. To cap it all off there was a tap dancing street performer that david loved. He just stood there watching completely awestruck.
As we waited in the BART station for our train to arrive, quite a few other trains came through, and David got very excited each time. The ride home was largely uneventful, although David kept flirting with anyone who would look at him.
We wen to Mountain Mike's for dinner tonight, and it was pretty good. David ate a ton of food (both salad & pizza).