Visiting Silicon Valley and Fearing the Tree

We are staying in the "East Bay" area, which is so named because it is east of the San Francisco Bay. So the only thing between us and the sights in San Francisco is a body of water that can be crossed by driving on several different toll bridges across the bay. But we decided to take the scenic route, and head south around the bay to an area that we have all heard about--Silicon Valley.

For the untrained eye, people might think that we are at a children's playground. But look closely at the colorful statues, and see if you can determine anything they have in common. That will be a clue to uncover where we are.

As we passed through this area of silicon valley, Mark recognized names of companies that he did business with before he retired. He recognized the buildings of Western Digital, Polycom, Juniper, and Microsoft. But now we are at a company that even Denisa recognizes.

We are at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, in their Android Statue Garden. Mark immediately recognized the Google android versions. Google named their new operating systems alphabetically. They started with boring names like android and beta. But when they looked for a name that started with a "c" for the third system they started looking to snack foods for inspiration. That would be cupcake, followed by the "d" which obviously is the next picture, "Denisa in donut." You should be able to see most of the alphabetically named androids in our picture--eclair, froyo, gingerbread, honeycomb, ice cream sandwich, jellybean, kitkat, lollipop, and marshmallow. The latest android, nougat, was introduced in 2016 as the new sweetest release, and hasn't showed up in the garden yet.

Googleplex is spread out over many buildings, so they provide brightly colored bicycles for transportation around their campus. They leave some bikes out for tourists to ride, as you can see in some of the pictures above. But it looks like there are also some brightly colored little cars in the parking lot as well. However, they didn't seem to be available for tourists to ride.

We made a stop at another familiar silicon valley company that just moved to Menlo Park. Interestingly enough, this is the same town where the Google company started in a garage. Instead of making you guess this time, we'll just give you the thumbs up at the Facebook headquarters. They have an interesting street address--1 Hacker Way. 

They just moved to this location, and gave the buildings a colorful new paint job. Their internal company motto is "move fast and break things."

We found a bike path that leads directly to the office. People that prefer to pedal to work have one of the best parking places, right in front of headquarters.

The only people with better parking spaces are the expectant mothers. We saw that they get front row seats at the google headquarters too.

Facebook's headquarters is in West Bay. We walked down the bike path to get our first view of the San Francisco Bay. We give the view from here a facebook thumbs up.

Our next stop in the neighborhood was Stanford University. We did our own version of a campus walking tour after getting some advice from the visitor center. On a beautiful Sunday afternoon it was easy to find a parking place by the athletic fields. We saw fan t-shirts for sale, with "Fear the Tree" logos on them. Stanford has an unusual mascot--a tree. We weren't sure what kind of tree to fear, as there was everything from palms to oaks to redwoods on campus in front of the tallest buildling--Hoover Tower.

The center of campus is the Stanford Memorial Church, built in 1903 as a memorial to the university founders. In a place where real estate is precious, the church is surrounded by a large open plaza.

The outside is decorated with tiny tiles that form the detailed frescos, framed with intricate stone detail.

But it was the inside that was the most beautiful. It reminded us of fine churches we have seen in Europe.

Mark snapped this picture of one of the many elaborate stain glass windows that decorated the church. We thought it was interesting to find out this church is non-denominational. Even though the windows and frescoes centered on Jesus's life and teachings, other religions hold services here as well.

Stanford University is one of the prettiest campuses we have ever visited. With mature trees and a climate that makes growing flowers so easy, going to college here would be like studying in a botanical garden. Instead of their fearsome chant of "Fear the Tree!" we rather like all these trees. Denisa also liked these bright orange flowers that were blooming at their best.

We started this drive in East Bay, and we traveled south around the tip of the water to West Bay. The traffic was crazy even on a Sunday afternoon, so we're glad we're not making this drive during a weekday rush hour. As much as we have been warned about the traffic in San Francisco, Mark is a fearless driver. So he turned the wheels in the direction of one of the trickiest places to take your vehicle. But that adventure will have to wait for the next blog.