Stanford University & Silicon Valley

Two weekends ago, Alex and I drove down to Stanford University to explore the campus and the surrounding area. I’ve mentioned it before, but I always enjoy touring around other colleges and seeing how their campus’s are set up. The Stanford University campus is beautiful and very spread out! They even have an art museum and church on site! One of my favorite parts of the campus was going to the top of the Hoover Tower. From the observation platform, you can see a 360-degree view. As it was a clear and sunny day, we were able to see the city of San Francisco WAY out in the distance! Alex printed off this self-guided tour map and it was helpful in finding our way around.

We spent the rest of the afternoon driving to see the major Silicon Valley headquarters including: Facebook, Google and Apple’s offices.

We started at the Facebook headquarters, but there was not much to see other than a large sign out front. I took this photo from the car as we drove by as we did not spend any time there.

We then drove to Google’s Headquarters. Here, we were able to get out and walk around the offices. Other than a few tourists like ourselves, the campus felt very quiet. Alex also commented he thought they had neglected basic landscaping and I have to agree. Despite the offices looking sleek and modern, there were parts of the campus where the landscaping felt overgrown or non-existent. That really surprised us (I realized I did not capture a good photo of this, so you’ll have to trust me on this one)!

The highlight of touring around Silicon Valley was definitely visiting the Apple campus. You are not allowed to visit the actual headquarters (Alex was bummed as he was hoping to see the circular office space), but they do have an interactive visitor center. One really cool aspect of the visitor center is they have this scaled-down version of the main Apple campus. It doesn’t look like much in person, but when you view it from their special Apple Ipads, the screen shows what the campus looks like in real life. It was pretty fun getting to play around with that! They also had a rooftop area where you could see some parts of the circular headquarters across the street.

We have both been curious about this area and are glad we made the decision to visit for the day. When we lived here in 2008-2009, we never did make it down to tour Stanford University and the latest tech boom had not yet occurred. From what we have read and heard, this area has changed quite a bit in the last ten years. Alex even came across an article in the last couple of weeks which highlighted an 800-square-foot apartment that was selling for $2.1 million dollars not far from the Google Headquarters! Ha! Doubt we will be purchasing a home out there! : )