Once again, the past weekend was characterized by a tour outside the San Francisco Bay with Sara. This time our trip was shorter than the previous one, though: on the one hand Sara had her plane to go back to Italy on Saturday afternoon, and on the other hand I could not take more days off, so I would be free only starting from lunchtime on Friday. Therefore we decided to have an excursion to the Monterey Bay (about one hundred miles south of San Francisco), passing by the Silicon Valley on our way back to the airport on Saturday morning.

The route that we follow in our outbound journey is the famous California State Route 1, also called Pacific Coast Highway or Highway 1, which is precisely the highway running along the Californian Pacific Coast and which, predictably, offers great views, as you can see.

Our first stop-over is in Santa Cruz, a town located at the Northern end of the Monterey Bay, which is also one of the ten universities of the University of California system. Before going to downtown, I would like to give a look at the campus and I must say that I remain quite surprised and intrigued by the fact that it is mostly located inside the wood on the hills sorrounding the town. Just imagine you are driving on a mountain road and suddenly you find the engineering building, then after a bend you find the students’ residences, then the social sciences building, and so on!

Downtown Santa Cruz basically corresponds to its luna park located on the ocean shore, the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, which, as you can find on Wikipedia, is the oldest amusement park in California (it was inaugurated in 1907). The place reminds an American movie, but overall it is not particularly attractive, in my opinion.

After having soaked our feet in the ocean (well, Sara did, I didn’t 🙂 ), we leave to Monterey, which is on the Southern end of the Bay.

Obviously we stop to take a picture of the sunset over the ocean…

… and finally we get to Monterey, where by the way we are very lucky because we find a really nice place for dinner (it’s called Lalla Oceanside Grill, should you pass by Monterey, sooner or later 🙂 ).

The following morning we move to Pacific Grove, which is next to Monterey (by the way, I don’t have pictures of the latter because when we arrived there, it was already dark): the place is definitely more elegant than Santa Cruz.

And the elegance continues, because at this point we enter the 17-Mile Drive, a coastal road (with an access fee) which runs in an area with many evocative locations near the ocean, something like five golf courses and extraordinary villas! If you are a San Francisco millionare, this is surely a nice place for your vacation, basically 🙂

Now it’s time to go back northward. This time we do not follow the shoreline, but an inner route, passing by the Silicon Valley, as said. I had already been told that this is not a magnificent place – it is not even a real valley, indeed! – but given that it was more or less on our route, I really wanted to satisfy my whim to give a look at the headquerters of the big IT companies. Actually we are super late – as always – and we have to do everything in a hurry!

As a first thing we go to Cupertino, which means Apple (we just gave a look at the Infinite Loop – if I happen to pass by here once again, I will give a look at the Spaceship as well):

Then we move to Mountain View, where there are the Google headquarters. As you can see, the Android robot is a great landmark here 🙂

The third stage is Stanford University, in Stanford (obviously!) / Palo Alto:

And finally Facebook, in Menlo Park (very quick photo because it is already super late and we could not find a sign with the big Facebook name written on it):

Bottom line, I confirm that, at least sightseeing like this, we did not find anything super special. The headquartes are all “perfect”, in green areas and very modern buildings, but from the outside you do not feel particulary excited. It is probably true that it would be much more interesting to spend some more time in the guided tours inside the offices.

Similarly, the Stanford Campus is very nice, but it almost seems too “precise” and “perfect”, with its large streets, many trees, new and impeccable buildings. I am not envious (I already talked about the rivarly between Stanford and Berkeley, in which I am barely interested, indeed), but I truly think that the Berkeley campus is much better: it is smaller (not small, anyways!), maybe less perfect, but more “real” and charming. In any case, whoever has the chance of coming in these areas will be able to express his/her own opinion!

Anyway, in the meantime we reached the airport, and it is time to say good bye to Sara: I really have to thank her because here trip here in the US has been a great opportunity for me, as you have seen, to finally have very nice tours around California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah!