yesterday was the big day in the city. fear not, a whole shitload of pictures are on the way, they're just still on jamie's camera... they'll probably be up later today or tomorrow.

we got started bright and early, catching the 10:29 caltrain out of palo alto, which got to the san francisco (4th and king) station about 11:40. wandered up stockton and through the metreon (a huge sony store, basically... trying to turn their merchandise into a museum). from there we walked up to the shopping area up stockton, checking out old navy (mike had never been in one!! what the hell?) and virgin megastore. looked at, but did not buy, overpriced cd's. we headed up to union square (which is, unfortunately, under construction, so we didn't get to do anything there). then we wandered down through chinatown. looked in a bunch of cute little shops, ate lunch at a really good restaurant, had pearl milk tea... then we walked down to fisherman's wharf and did all the tourist shit there. that is, all the free tourist shit. (: after fisherman's wharf, we wandered up through ghirardhelli square and up to van ness avenue, where we caught a bus to the market street subway station, and got on a subway out in the direction of the Haight. we spent a few hours wandering around the Haight, especially this huge music store called amoeba music, which is fucking insanely large and inexpensive. they have new and used cd's, tapes, vinyl, posters... they had a clearance cd section, and we bought 4 cd's for $3, including a vintage Toadies cd, the Blue October album, and two really, really odd ambient/trance cd's. it was pouring when we came out of amoeba, so we didn't see that much more of the neighborhood, just a few punk shops (saw a shirt that said "fuck milk, got pot?" and stuff) and the salvation army, at which i bought a horrendously ugly NSYNC shirt and a bunch of bubbles for like $3. by the time we left the salvation army it was pouring, so we left the haight and went to a little cafe to eat. (i didn't get anything pierced. i was pondering it, but there wasn't time, and i really don't have enough money to do something like that. oh well.) random side note: in the cafe, there were 2 japanese women behind us. one made a call on her cell phone - and i understood almost everything she was saying to the person on the other end. it was her boyfriend's mother, as i understood, and he was out, and she wanted to confirm that they had a date that night. it was really cool. anyway, then we caught the subway back to the caltrain station and the caltrain back to palo alto. it was, all in all, a highly fun day - i'm really glad we went. (: