Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
nect with Hwy 17, the quickest route to Santa Cruz. Any of these routes can be combined
into an interesting loop or extended to the Monterey Peninsula.
And don't bother looking for Silicon Valley on the map - you won't find it. Because sil-
icon chips form the basis of modern microcomputers, and the Santa Clara Valley - stretch-
ing from Palo Alto down through Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Cupertino and Santa Clara
to San Jose - is thought of as the birthplace of the microcomputer, it's been dubbed 'Silic-
on Valley.' The Santa Clara Valley is wide and flat, and its towns are essentially a string of
shopping centers and industrial parks linked by a maze of freeways. It's hard to imagine
that even after WWII this area was still a wide expanse of orchards and farms.
NERDS' NIRVANA
Touted as the largest computer history exhibition in the world, the
Computer History Mu-
seum
( 650-810-1010;
www.computerhistory.org
;
1401 N Shoreline Blvd, Mountain View; adult/stu-
dent & senior $15/12; 10am-5pm Wed-Sun) has rotating exhibits drawn from its
100,000-item collection. Artifacts range from the abacus to the iPod, including Cray-1 su-
percomputers, a Babbage Difference Engine (a Victorian-era automatic computing en-
gine) and the first Google server.
Don't come looking to ogle the latest iPhone or get a Genius Bar consultation. At
Apple
Headquarters
(
www.apple.com/companystore
;
1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino; 10am-5:30pm Mon-
Fri), hardcore fans can load up on Apple-branded clothing and ephemera from its com-
pany store and commiserate that, yes, Steve Jobs has left the building.
facts/locations
; 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View), visitors can stroll the campus and
gawk at the public art on the leafy grounds, where scads of Googlers zoom about on
primary-colored bicycles. Don't miss the 'dessert yard' outside Building 44, with lawn
sculptures of Android operating systems (a cupcake! a donut! a robot!), and across the
street, a toothy T-Rex festooned in pink flamingos next to the volleyball court.
seum
; 2200 Mission College Blvd, Santa Clara; 9am-6pm Mon-Fri, 10am-5pm Sat) has displays
on the birth and growth of the computer industry with special emphasis, not surprisingly,
on microchips and Intel's involvement. Reserve ahead if you want to schedule a guided
tour.
