Ask HN: I'll be visiting the SV soon. What are some of its must-see sights?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=997147

by nearestneighbor • 17 years ago

4 9 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'll be visiting the Silicon Valley soon. What are some of its must-see sights, in your opinion?

davidw• 17 years ago

San Francisco.

nearestneighbor• 17 years ago

SV is that boring, eh?

evgen• 17 years ago

Not really, but the hipsters and scene kids like to think that culture ends once you can no longer smell the bum urine. SV covers a lot of territory, so getting an idea of your approximate location might help. If you are going to be in the Palo Alto/MV area then you should check out the Computer History Museum, the Tech Museum is currently running a nice Star Trek exhibit and the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum is worth the effort if you have the time. Depending on whether or not you will have a car during your visit, the Monterrey Bay Aquarium is an hour or so away.

There is quite a lot to do in the south bay and peninsula without needing to fight traffic to visit that small town to our north. Everyone should visit SF for a day or so to see the tourist traps and savor the odor, but with a little bit of searching you can find a lot of interesting things that might be a bit closer to wherever you are sleeping...

japanesejay• 17 years ago

Where (or what country?) are you coming from?

And yes, there are a lot of good things to do in SF more so than the Silicon Valley. Let me know what your interests are, i can point you to a few good things. If you know people (maybe you can meet them here), visiting the google campus and/or yahoo campus is always a treat. Not sure if Facebook has anything exciting to offer, but i know their office space looks nice.

If you want to visit something techie/educational, the exploatorium is fun, academy of science is great. There are more good eats in sf than sv (imho).

csmeder• 17 years ago

SV aka Man Jose? My brother has lived in San Jose for the past 8 years. The only place I have ever heard him complement is http://www.jumpskyhigh.com/

The problem with SV its a bunch of Suburbs. San Jose is the biggest city their and its rather boring. I agree with Davidw check out SF it has 10 times as much stuff to do.

wmf• 17 years ago

The Computer History Museum. Unfortunately the Difference Engine is gone.

Dav3xor• 17 years ago

Sad about the Difference engine -- I was there on one of the days when they turned the crank (totally by accident). If you show up on a 3rd Saturday of the month(I think it's the 3rd Saturday), you can see the PDP-1 run and meet one of the guys who programmed Spacewar back in 1962.

It's an incredible museum.

cpr• 17 years ago

(Warning: I left there in 1985, but have visited often.)

There's really not all that much to see in SV proper--it's just a classic suburban sprawl, with tract homes intermingled with endless strip malls along El Camino, with occasional high-tech business parks thrown in for good measure, all intermingled around two major north/south highways (280 and 101).

If you want to see the source of it all, be sure to visit Stanford. It's truly a lovely campus. And then stroll down University Blvd, where you can pick up a faint vibe of what's going on in the valley. (Facebook (which you don't care about) just left University, but there are lots of other VC offices & coffee shops/restaurants along there full of high-tech folk.)

I'd get up on Skyline Drive, above the valley, and get some over-views from there. Beautiful drive as well.

Then you might wander over the mountains (if you can stand the traffic) on 17 to Santa Cruz and surrounding areas, which have some great sights.

Carmel, down past Monterrey, is a classic California coastal scene, if a rather expensive place to hang out. Worth a trip. Great restaurants, great little beach & cluster of houses around.

Then there's SF itself, and the northern scene (Muir Woods, etc.) All worth a few days of poking around (or a lifetime), but there's so much to see and do up there that I couldn't do it justice.

I've got a lot of fond memories of the valley, but they're mostly personal (where I used to hang out with my then-fiancée, where we lived (hmm, actually, not all that fond of either house & neighborhood), where I worked at various start-ups, what church I used to attend, etc.).

Otherwise, what happens in SV is mostly happening inside somewhat bland office buildings strewn about the valley, and there's nothing really worth seeing in that sense, unless you just want to say you've "been there."

NonEUCitizen• 17 years ago

Fry's. HSC Electronic Supply (www.halted.com). 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino. Stanford. Googleplex.

Ask HN: I'll be visiting the SV soon. What are some of its must-see sights?

Related Stories