Ask HN: Visiting Palo Alto this summer. What should a geek do/see/visit?

#1

Post by bbot23 » Tue, May 29, 2012, 2:28 AM UTC

Hey everyone, I've never really traveled outside of my home town (Montreal, Canada) but I now have the opportunity to go visit my dad for a week and he is stationed in Palo Alto. The prospect of seeing with my own eyes the tech hub that I read news from almost on an hourly basis is mind-boggling to me and I already feel like a child that is about to go to Disneyland.

I really want to take advantage of the week to visit places that minds such as yourselves consider MUST SEE. If I can visit such places, that would be truly the greatest vacation ever.

Any recommendations? I should be going for June 19-25 if there are any time-sensitive places that you would recommend.

Thank you in advance, and cheers for making HN an awesome website to procrastinate to!

Re: Ask HN: Visiting Palo Alto this summer. What should a geek do/see/visit?

#2

Post by gms » Tue, May 29, 2012, 3:00 AM UTC

First thing is not to expect much. Your first reaction will be 'Is this it? Suburbia and McMansions?'. And you will be right.

The factor that makes it a 'tech hub' is the people (take them away and Palo Alto becomes utterly uninteresting), so you might want to see if any interesting tech types have time to meet with you (if you care to).

Having said that, this thread might have things of interest to see: http://www.quora.com/Palo-Alto-CA/How-shall-I-spend-my-day-i...

Since you're there for a while you should also take the train to San Francisco. Most of the startups there are in SoMa, so you should walk around there if you want to get a feel for what it's like.

Re: Ask HN: Visiting Palo Alto this summer. What should a geek do/see/visit?

#3

Post by NonEUCitizen » Tue, May 29, 2012, 3:45 AM UTC

Fry's Electronics. Computer History Museum. Downtown Palo Alto (University Ave.). Downtown Mountain View (Castro St.). Hacker Dojo. Stanford University.

Re: Ask HN: Visiting Palo Alto this summer. What should a geek do/see/visit?

#4

Post by jgeorge » Tue, May 29, 2012, 6:48 PM UTC

Do heed the warnings that it's not really all that Disneyland. PA's a beautiful city, but its notoriety as a tech giant is largely shrouded by its quaint and quiet suburbanness.

My trips to the area have been very intensely business related so I don't have many tourist suggestions.

Food: Milkshake at the Creamery on Emerson and University. Beer at Antonio's Nut House on California Ave. Burger at Kirk's Steakburgers on ECR by Palo Alto High School. Slice at Pizza My Heart.

PA Places: Stanford Campus/University Ave. Take pictures, it's a beautiful campus. Apple store on University if a Steve Jobs pilgrimage is your thing. If you play any stringed musical instruments check out Griffon at Park and Margerita (I think, its near the Fry's at El Camino Real and Portage). You can't do anything other than take a picture of the HP Garage, but if you want to experience momentous Palo Alto history, there it is.

Get outside of PA: Definitely get down to Mountain View for the Computer History Museum. Apple's company store in Cupertino (1 Infinite Loop) is open to the public, go there, do that, buy a t-shirt, if you're so inclined).