I guess each software engineer needs to go to the Silicon Valley at least once in their lives. This is, after all, where quite a few of the modern-day companies were born. Google, E-Bay, HP and Apple are just a few of the companies that were born here. So, me being a software engineer, I was rather looking forward to seeing what the Silicon Valley was like, for a few days at least.
After picking up my colleague Sakari at the airport, we made our way down to Sunny Vale, where we were going to spend the next few days. After checking in at our hotel, we made our way into the “town center” for dinner. I put town center in quotes, since Sunnyvale is, like pretty much all of the Silicon Valley, more or less a residential suburb, with a few offices dotted amongst the residential houses. Sunnyvale does have one “historic street” with plenty of restaurants, Murphy street (named after the founder of Sunnyvale, Martin Murphy Jr.). Actually, Sunnvale does date back to the 20th century, but there isn’t much of historic interest left to see. Anyways, we ended up dining in the Firestone steakhouse – a nice enough eatery serving rather tasty burgers.
The next day, Timo, a fellow Finn working at our Silicon Valley office had promised to take us for a tour of Palo Alto. Palo Alto is home to one of the most prestigious teaching establishments in the US of A, Standford University. We started our visit of Palo Alto by having a walk around the campus. Stanford University was founded in 1891 by a railroad tycoon called Leland Stanford. The campus is very impressive, but I have to say I was less endeared to the place than to Berkley. The buildings look somehow more austere than the ones in Berkley. But, nonetheless, I was quite impressed by the Memorial church, and the Rodin sculpture garden.
Having done the touristy bit, we made our way to the “strip” with its restaurants. It’s a fair bit more lively than the Sunnyvale equivalent – unsurprising given the student connection, I suppose. We ended up in a very nice Asian-Latino fusion restaurant – I had some rather excellent tapas.
On Wednesday, we decided to go for some proper burgers for lunch (instead of tempting the canteen, or ordering in pizza). We ended up in a real Silicon Valley institution (apparently), St John's. Well, the burgers were good - and the bar looked pretty cool as well. Fot the evening, some of our colleagues wanted to discuss one a project of theirs with us, and kindly enough bought us dinner. We made our way to an Italian restaurant in San Jose, where they pitched their ideas to us. It all felt very Silicon Valley like, so it was quite an experience. One of the chaps was a real Silicon Valley veteran as well, so 
he had some funny “war stories” to tell.
Thursday was our last night out, so we finished off with dinner together with Heng, Tuukka and Leif, who’d been working with us all week. We ended up in a Chinese restaurant near the Sunnyvale office. The food was kind of average, but it was all good fun anyway.
That brought an end to my stint in the US of A, as we caught our flight back to Europe the next day. All in all, it had been quite an interesting experience to see what the Silicon Valley is all about!
After picking up my colleague Sakari at the airport, we made our way down to Sunny Vale, where we were going to spend the next few days. After checking in at our hotel, we made our way into the “town center” for dinner. I put town center in quotes, since Sunnyvale is, like pretty much all of the Silicon Valley, more or less a residential suburb, with a few offices dotted amongst the residential houses. Sunnyvale does have one “historic street” with plenty of restaurants, Murphy street (named after the founder of Sunnyvale, Martin Murphy Jr.). Actually, Sunnvale does date back to the 20th century, but there isn’t much of historic interest left to see. Anyways, we ended up dining in the Firestone steakhouse – a nice enough eatery serving rather tasty burgers.
The next day, Timo, a fellow Finn working at our Silicon Valley office had promised to take us for a tour of Palo Alto. Palo Alto is home to one of the most prestigious teaching establishments in the US of A, Standford University. We started our visit of Palo Alto by having a walk around the campus. Stanford University was founded in 1891 by a railroad tycoon called Leland Stanford. The campus is very impressive, but I have to say I was less endeared to the place than to Berkley. The buildings look somehow more austere than the ones in Berkley. But, nonetheless, I was quite impressed by the Memorial church, and the Rodin sculpture garden.Having done the touristy bit, we made our way to the “strip” with its restaurants. It’s a fair bit more lively than the Sunnyvale equivalent – unsurprising given the student connection, I suppose. We ended up in a very nice Asian-Latino fusion restaurant – I had some rather excellent tapas.
On Wednesday, we decided to go for some proper burgers for lunch (instead of tempting the canteen, or ordering in pizza). We ended up in a real Silicon Valley institution (apparently), St John's. Well, the burgers were good - and the bar looked pretty cool as well. Fot the evening, some of our colleagues wanted to discuss one a project of theirs with us, and kindly enough bought us dinner. We made our way to an Italian restaurant in San Jose, where they pitched their ideas to us. It all felt very Silicon Valley like, so it was quite an experience. One of the chaps was a real Silicon Valley veteran as well, so 
he had some funny “war stories” to tell.Thursday was our last night out, so we finished off with dinner together with Heng, Tuukka and Leif, who’d been working with us all week. We ended up in a Chinese restaurant near the Sunnyvale office. The food was kind of average, but it was all good fun anyway.
That brought an end to my stint in the US of A, as we caught our flight back to Europe the next day. All in all, it had been quite an interesting experience to see what the Silicon Valley is all about!
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