As a tech nerd, I always dreamt of visiting Silicon Valley. I had always pictured it as a district with a town square surrounded by coffee shops, big companies, and geeks strolling around with their bikes or weird e-somethings. You know, an e-scooter, uninvented e-skateboard, and their Google Goggles on. Ok, that one is a bit far fetched. But c'mon, the town square must exist, right?
I pictured that every big tech company would have a shop, and I could visit it and see some of their coolest gadgets and products. Kind of a Disney World for geeks! I imagined drinking coffee in one of these coffee places and feeling inspired by the tech geeky atmosphere.
I guess I really built Silicon Valley up in my head, huh?
So as we were approaching Silicon Valley, I was expecting to see this amazing square with some sort of welcome sign. Yvonne suddenly told me: 'Ok, we are here!'. And I looked around and said: 'you're kidding, right?'.
As I observed around me, there were only residential areas - gated communities with just... streets. There was no big sign saying 'Welcome to Silicon Valley' or anything of that sort. Hm...I guess no geeky town square exists here.
If you are curious, here is a map of Silicon Valley, with no town square (obviously).
Silicon Valley consists mainly of:
- Menlo Park: Facebook's Headquarters
- Palo Alto: Stanford University and Tesla's Showroom
- Mountain View: Google's Headquarters
- Cupertino: Apple Visitor Center
As it turns out, only Google and Apple have some sort of merchandise store.
- Google Merchandise Store: only open on weekdays, for more details check out Yelp.
- Apple Visitor Center: open all week - for more details head over to their site.
Now, back to our story. We were heading towards Google's Headquarters. Suddenly, I see a very subtle sign announcing a Google building. Then another building, and another one, and so on. As it turns out, the 'Googleplex' consists of more than 60 buildings! And they are all scattered around.
So without much information, we pulled up to one and parked. We got off the car and started walking around the building. You are not allowed to enter any building of any company unless you are a worker's guest. So we explored the outer part of this place.
We suddenly saw a beach volleyball court and a game happening. Some people were playing against each other, while some energetic music was blasting off some speakers. That was fun! Ok, at least beach volleyball exists here!
We found Stan, the famous T-Rex, sat with Oreos and took a bike out for a stroll. Important note, though, these bikes are for employees only! The security guard told me in a very friendly way that I was not supposed to use them. He was kind enough to allow Yvonne to take a few pictures of me.
We went back to our car and decided to drive around Stanford. Wow, that campus is huge! We drove and saw all these beautiful buildings. I kept on imagining the types of lectures and discussions that were happening as we were outside cruisin'. Everyone looked so smart!
We left the campus and continued with our drive down to Los Angeles.
That was it, our Silicon Valley experience. No geeky square, no weird vehicles, no geeks walking around with techy glasses on.
I guess that is what happens when you build something up in your mind without actually doing any research about it, huh? Anyways, it was a visit worth having. I got to meet Stan (the T-rex)!
