Silicon Valley (San Jose, Apple, Google, Stanford, and a bonus)

[plinko]

• Video Link

My son is way into technology. At 10 he has already built out his own gaming computer, gotten in trouble for hacking into the school’s computers, and has an understanding of physics that it took me multiple college courses to master.

So while my daughter wanted to venture to D.C. on a trip, my son wanted something a bit different: Silicon Valley. We went and spent a few days, hitting up Apple, Google, and Computer History Museum, MicroCenter (for more expensive parts!), Stanford, and roamed the Valley. Unfortunately, while I have contacts at Apple and Google, they were both out of town so we just got to go to the public areas of the campuses. Oh well, next time.

We also had to venture north after this to pick my daughter in Sacramento, which allowed a pitstop in the City…

San Jose…nothing magical or really exciting, bit it is not without…

SJ 001 by Michael Stroh, on Flickr


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And we venture to Apple Park, a sleek, buttoned down approach to a visitor’s experience. It all kinds of reads as ‘go away’. Sadly, they don’t let you go into the ring unless you are invited (next time). But the visitor’s center is architecturally pleasant in a ‘please buy a $1,200 phone’ kind of way.


APPLE 001 by Michael Stroh, on Flickr


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The elusive ring across the street…

APPLE 011 by Michael Stroh, on Flickr


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The Googleplex on the other hand, is open, playful, colorful, and decidedly less polished than their competition across the Valley…


GOOGLE 001 by Michael Stroh, on Flickr


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Micro Center, where I spent 90 minutes listening to my son school the employees on why one particular graphics card or CPU is better than another…

MICROCENTER 001 by Michael Stroh, on Flickr

The Computer History Museum…

MOC 001 by Michael Stroh, on Flickr


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Off to Stanford, where it was Homecoming Weekend (Stanford hosting Wake Forest? Mega matchup!). My fiance’s youngest is wrapping up her Master’s degree so she showed us around…

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Fear the Tree!

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We needed to venture up to Sacramento to pick up my daughter. Why sit in traffic on 580 when you can take the Bay Bridge?

SFO 021 by Michael Stroh, on Flickr


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For the first time ever, I got off at Yerba Buena / Treasure Island…

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It should be a prison again if there is only one inmate…

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A few days later we come the other direction…headed home…

SFO 001 by Michael Stroh, on Flickr


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And back home…

[ColDayMan]

R.I.P. Great America.

[Evo5Boise]

Fun tour!! The Bay Area is great. Always enjoy my visits there. Love San Jose......just sucks their downtown can't grow vertical. Who points an airport at the city's downtown core?

Apple's architecture is really cool and minimalistic, but has a cold feeling to it.

[38 Geary]

Very nice tour! And super extensive. You went to a lot of places in a short amount of time. We don’t get to see these parts of the Bay Area very often on the forum. It’s very sprawly and auto centric but there are some nice pockets. Overall very underrated. I’ve always found DTSJ to be fairly vibrant especially when SJSU is in session or there’s a Sharks game. Also neat to see you made it out to Alice's. Lots of great scenic driving roads in that area. I'm guessing you saw a lot of cool machinery while you were up there!

[JManc]

Downtown SJ is underrated at least as far as stuff to do; e.g., San Pedro Market Square and Santana Row.

Btw, last few times I visited Google, the grounds were full of geese and geese shit. Was it still like that?

[EastSideHBG]

[202_Cyclist]

Thank you for posting these photos. The buildings in San Jose and Irvine are about at the same scale but the downtown core of San Jose is significantly denser and walkable, as well as being served by rail transit. I wish Irvine could development into something like San Jose instead of having six-lane roads and being almost entirely auto-oriented.

[xzmattzx]

Great pictures! I especially liked the pictures of the Stanford campus.

No pictures from Sacramento?