Today was Apple’s birthday. For some time now, we’ve been planning a “shopping outing” to celebrate the occasion, and I even took the day off (with plans to work tomorrow instead) so we could enjoy it undisturbed. So as soon as we rolled out of bed this morning (at a leisurely time, I don’t mind telling you), we set off.

It was a great day. The weather was perfect — between 65 and 70 degrees and partly cloudy — and there seemed to be very few crowds everywhere we went. We first went to Coastland Center mall, then moved northward to Coconut Point to do the bulk of our shopping. Like a kid in a candy store — or several of them, rather — Apple moved from place to place, checking out all of her favorite outlets and looking for fashionable things that caught her eye.

We capped off the festivities with two great meals: A nice lunch at Calistoga, recently opened inside the Coastland mall (and with an expanded menu, too, which this chain had badly needed, IMO), and then later, a wonderful dinner at Blue Water Bistro. The latter is a new seafood restaurant at Coconut Point with a wide selection of fresh and exotic fish, like the Kajiki (Pacific Blue Marlin) I chose. By nightfall it was getting chilly, but we ended the night by enjoying a waffle cone of chocolate ice cream. Mostly because we wanted to test the theory that ice cream tastes better when it’s cold outside, not when it’s hot. (For the record, I think we both found the theory had merit.)

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