Good morning guys and dolls. After a huge day of shopping in San Francisco yesterday, CandyBarbie is too tired to post. We were driving to the city by 8am and didn’t get home until just after 10pm. Our itinerary included: drive an hour towards the city then stop at BART in Dublin, ride the train to Westfield Mall, go look at Barbies, go look at dresses and shoes for the big party coming up in August, look for a shirt for me, meet up with some NFL players for lunch and then watch them try to outspend us, look at more shoes, make the football players try on all manners of clothing and jewelry items, look at more shoes, get back on the train and drive home.
Even though we left at 8am, it took us an hour to get to the BART station in Dublin. For those of you reading who are wondering what exactly BART is, it stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit and it is a sort of train that runs all over the Bay Area. We typically drive to the closest one on the way to San Francisco (in our case it’s the Dublin/Pleasanton station). It costs CandyBarbie and I $12 each and in return we avoid $5 in tolls at the bridge, the cost of gas to go the extra 30 miles there and back, and most of all the parking fees in the city which can be more than $20 easily. And on top of all that, it’s environmentally friendly.
By the time we actually got into San Francisco, it was nearly 11am. Our first stop was Starbucks, on the way to our second stop which was Jeffrey’s toys on Market.
The two best prospects for potential Barbie buys were: Angel and Scotland Barbie.
Angel Barbie
I was pretty sure we could get them still at BarbieCollector.com and we didn’t really want to have to carry them around all day and worry about dinging the box corners and such so we decided to pass on the Barbie purchase for the day.
The next stop was on the way back to Union Square at Betsey Johnson.
Now you are probably all aware of CandyBarbie’s impending birthday extravaganza and her recent post titled “The Dress”. This was a Betsey Johnson dress called Snow Queen which we saw in San Jose a few weeks back. At the time it was $470 and I helped her decide to pass on it. So this time we decided to go to the store in San Francisco with the knowledge of a 30% off sale on all dresses happening in the store. Unfortunately, they did not have the Snow Queen dress in her size. But fortunately, CandyBarbie found a dress that she fell in love with even more than the last dress. And here’s the real beauty of this story for me: my lovely wife was able to follow her golden rule of shopping. The rule is: If you wouldn’t buy it at full price, don’t buy it. Just because it’s on sale doesn’t mean you should spend money on something that you don’t really want that badly.
When CandyBarbie tried this on, she hadn’t looked at the price tag. Once she had decided she was in love with this new dress and had declared it better than the last dress, we turned to the price tag. Whooo Hooo! This dress started at a similar price to the last one. Fortunately, it had been marked down dramatically…BEFORE the 30% off which still applied. I was so pleased, I let her buy an extra present before we left. She got herself a little jeweled snake ring which she put on and wore around for the rest of our day.
Next up was a trip to Neiman Marcus to look at shoes to go with her new dress. After spending plenty of time looking at shoes, she was able to find one pair of Jimmy Choo’s that she liked and that also matched up pretty well with the dress. Not being 100% sold on the shoes, we decided to wait and went down stairs to the men’s department. I was able to locate myself a very nice lavender Prada shirt, and was even more fortunate to get the blessing from CandyBarbie to go ahead and make the purchase, even if the shirt was a bit expensive.
After getting myself taken care of for the day, we headed up to Saks 5th Avenue to take a look at more shoes. CandyBarbie was able to find a different pair of shoes (Jimmy Choo’s again, which was interesting to me because she doesn’t usually gravitate towards Choo’s) and while trying this pair on our group of two became four as my brother and his friend/teammate Bruce came walking in. It was funny to see two big guys walk down the stairs into the shoe salon at Saks.
After deciding to think about it again on the shoes, the four of us headed down to the Cheese Cake Factory for some much-needed lunch.
- Colin and Bruce
Colin had chicken strips (wow, big surprise), Bruce had chicken marsala, CandyBarbie had a Santa Fe chicken salad (which was the lunch size and was gigantic and also was not a surprise) and I had the jambalaya. We finished it off with a slice of peanut butter cheesecake for Bo, a slice of strawberry for Bruce, and a slice of apple streusel for CandyBarbie and I to share (mostly for me though).
That’s it for part 1.
Come back later for part 2 as we go crazy at Niketown, then go crazier at Cartier, and eventually find our way back to the Valley just in time to pass out on the couch.
Even big, strong football players need a best friend. *wink wink*
