1 day in the Valley

On Friday, 10/19/2017 we thought the weather was going to let us down so we decided to try a Silicon Valley tour.  Our driver, Mary, picked us up at The Palace and we headed down the peninsula towards San Jose.  Our first stop was Oracle founded by Larry Ellison.  He is apparently a somewhat polarizing dude in the Bay.  On a Silicon Valley tour it is assumed most of these centers had a visitors area with a piece of code, etc that was critical to their history.  They don’t, they are very concerned with anyone getting in to steal their good ideas.

Yeah, Oracle. Yeah, relational databases... whatever that is.

We did walk through Oracle’s campus a little bit.  Larry Ellison is into sailing so this is on display between the 2 main buildings

Behind the girls is the winning boat (catamaran) from the 33rd America’s Cup which the Oracle Team won.  It can travel up to 54 mph.  And it is huge.

The big cat in the plaza

Larry did not come out to personally greet us or inspire Ashley to use her powers for good.

Next stop was Facebook.  Their campus looks like a Minnesota outlet mall

See what I mean, where is Nordstrom Rack or a Nike Outlet?

We did get a picture by the sign.  Notice the street address.  Of  note, Facebook didn’t spend the money to fix the back of this sign which still reads Sun Microsystems.

Mark Zuckerberg did not come out and greet Kari as a loyal Facebook user.  I think she will have to give up her friendship game.

From Facebook we travelled to Palo Alto.  Which according to Mary, our guide,  is Spanish for tall trees🌲.  We drove through Professorville, which are these beautiful older homes around the Stanford campus.  We finally arrived at Stanford.  The two 40 year olds apppeared to be more engaged and excited than the high school sophomore.  The campus is beautiful.

We did a visitors tour with Mark.  Mark is a senior majoring in economics. He is from Japan.  He loves Stanford.  He reports that about 90+% of the undergraduate population live on campus for all 4 years.  Everyone seems to ride a bike.  Stanford is on a quarter system (10 weeks) instead of a semester system.

The track with Stanford stadium behind it

Hoover Tower and the fountain in front

Looking in on the Quad

The church (nondenominational) inside the quad.  The Art Deco mural is amazing.

Inside the church. Amazing architecture and art.  Totally unexpected.

A set of the stained glass window from the church

Ten Facts about Stanford 

1. Full Name: Leland Standord Junior University

2. Founded in 1885 by Leland Stanford in memory of his cell son who died at 15 from Typhoid Fever.

3. Initially it was suppose to be free to the children of California.

4. Stanford’s nickname is the Farm.

5. It has the largest collection of Rodin sculptures outside of Paris.  ( We didn’t have time to find and explore)

6. Herbert Hoover is reported to be the first student as he may have snuck in the night before school opened and stayed in the dorms

7. Phil Knight attended Stanford Buisness school.

8. Googles first URL was:  www.google.stanford.edu

9. The roofs of the buildings are generally red so that Leland Stanford Junior can see them from heaven.

10. Engineering Prof. Fredrick Terman, is regarded as the father of Silicon Valley as he encouraged his students to take their creations to the market and develop them into viable buisness.

Bonus:  the golden spike driven by Leland Stanford to contect The Transcontinental railroad resides there.

After Stanford we are a quick lunch and I enjoyed one of these

It was great and so was the pizza.  We discussed plans for the future.  Ashley informed us that she may try a more vegetarian lifestyle after Thanksgiving.  Katie informed us that was planning on becoming lactose intolerant after Thanksgiving as well.🥛😢

From there we travelled to the Winchester House of Mystery.  The story goes something like this, Sarah Winchester was convinced of the occult.  She had lost a daughter as a child and her husband had died young from tuberculosis.  A medium convinced her to move west and build a house and continue building the house or the spirits of all those killed by the “gun that won the west” would bring her a similar fate.  She moved west, bought a farm house and began construction which continued for 38 years.  Some believe the rooms harbored friendly ghosts and the constant hammering and sawing keept ghosts with bad intentions away.

The house is crazy inside with doors to nowhere, cabinets that open into rooms or walls, stairs with lower riser steps with 8-8 turns that only goes up 9 feet.  No pictures are allowed on the tour.  The outside of the house does appear quite beautiful

The front of the Winchester house of Mystery 

Here is another, is it still Mysterious?

After being caught in this tourist trap we headed  back to SF.  The girls were pretty much done and there wasn’t a lot of opportunities for interaction with anyone so here are the following 

Outside of 1 Infiniti Loop, Apple HQ

This is one of the many Google buildings and signs.  They actually have a sculpture garden with a donut and little android sculptures.  However the girls interest was low and the garden was over run with tourists from the Far East.

After an 80 min car ride home, I had 4 beers and appetizers at the Pied Piper with Kari and Grace.  Ashley and Katie ordered room service.  They enjoyed a little Calamari.

Overall a pretty good day thanks mainly to Mark and Leland Stanford.  Tomorrow we are going to get lost in “The City”.