Animals

Taylor and I had the most romantic dinner in downtown last night. I don't remember the name of the restaurant, but it was a gorgeous restaurant with outdoor seating. There were candles on the tables, along with a single red rose. When I opened the menu, I was shocked at the prices. 50, 60 bucks for a steak? I end up ordering a salad and Taylor had ordered a pasta.

He held my hand almost the entire time at the restaurant. He didn't want to let it go while we were eating. Eventually, he had to let it go to use his fork, but I found it to be incredibly cute. We ended up sharing out dishes and our dessert. The cheesecake was to-die-for! An NYC cheesecake drizzled in strawberry sauce. I thought that the Chili's cheesecake was fantastic, but it didn't hold a candle to this one.

We ended the night out on the town by going to a club called Deco's. Somehow, by luck, I had gotten in without having to show my ID. We only stayed for an hour, it really wasn't my scene. I didn't want to see sleazy guys try to pick up girls. Luckily, I had Taylor with me and the guys had backed off.

By the time we had gotten back to the hotel, we were exhausted. Taylor turned on the TV and flipped through the channels until he found a movie that was playing. We had cuddled under his blanket and did more kissing than watching the movie.

"Thank you for today," I told him.

"Anything for you, Court," he told me, kissing my forehead. We ended up falling asleep in each other's arms.

Surprisingly, I woke up early this morning. Taylor wanted to take me to the zoo. I was really excited to see the animals. When we got to the zoo, the first animal we saw were the koalas. They were extremely cute. They didn't care that they had 10 people watching them, they still went on with their daily activities.

Our next stop were the elephants. Somehow, we had wandered to a place where the elephants were in cages. The people who worked at the zoo were feeding the elephants and providing them with water. It was cool to see them use their trunks to get their food.

Then, we waited 45 minutes in line to see the baby panda and its mother that were on exhibit for only 2 hours a day. We had also gotten to see the two older pandas. One of them was sleeping on the top of the tree and the other one had their back to us, eating bamboo. We had gotten lucky and the panda had gotten up and walked to the little pond to get a drink of water. So, we got a glimpse of her face.

The most memorable part of my day was getting to feed the giraffes. When I say "get", I mean, pay to feed the giraffes. We paid 5 dollars and had gotten 3 dog-treat-like biscuits. I ended up feeding a giraffe named Silver. He was very greedy and tried to take the biscuits away from the other two giraffes that were in the feeding area.

We had stopped in various gift shops all over the zoo. He had bought me two stuffed pandas hugging from the Panda Shop. I had gotten him a little stuffed tiger. We stayed until the zoo closed at 5. I want to come back one day to see the Polar Bear Exhibit that was closed due to construction.

"We should go back to the hotel and get our things," Taylor said. "I have to get you back home before school tomorrow."

"Ok," I said, smiling. I gave him a kiss and hopped on the back of his hike.

We went back to the hotel and got our things and checked out. We had a long drive back to Beachside. I was sad to leave San Diego, but I'll always have the memories from here.