Last year, I was sent for a month to my company headquarters, located in Silicon Valley. With four other teammates, we went to know the Mountain View local team and to learn from them. In this bad attempt of a travel log, I will comment on the things that caught my attention of United States (or at least of the San Francisco Bay Area) and some stories of the travel.

One of my biggest surprises from the States is that the urban design is too much car-centric. My first time living this urban philosophy first-hand was some years ago, when I came for a work interview and I had the brilliant idea of walking to my hotel from the nearest BART station ^[1].

Map of a 3 hour walk. — That’s why you don’t simply walk into Mordo–I say– in the States.

This time, the company rented a car for us, so I didn’t suffer as a pedestrian, but I couldn’t get accustomed to the differences of the city design.

Fry’s

In the Third World, or at leas in Chile, electronic goods are mostly sold in two kinds of stores: department stores, that only have a little of consumer electronics, and specialized stores, that even then have little variety. In the land of freedom, though, they have the Electronics Mecca: Fry’s. In this megastore, you find from electronics components, like resistors and capacitors, to computers and even home appliances. Like a colleague of mine said, the fact that you can go with cart and take an oscilloscope from the shelves is on another level.

Stanford

Although in Chile we have some pretty nice university campuses, they never reach the scale that is common in the States, so we paid a visit to a nearby one: Stanford.

After the quest of finding an empty parking spot^[2], we started wandering until the museums in the campus caught our attention.

Building with Greco-Roman columns at the end of a road. — What? Your campus doesn’t have an Art Museum inside?

Since we arrived a bit late, we didn’t enter the museum, so we could see more of the campus. Given that they were more buildings with interesting architecture, I think it was some of the ~~few~~ times that we made a good call.

People walking away on a corridor with large glass windows at the right and an orange structure on the left. — One of the Architecture Department corridors.

When the meal time came, we ask a security guard for pointers, but it seems that ~~he trolled us~~ we didn’t understood him, so we ended up at the student dorms. Even when we were lost, we managed to find the food court and the souvenirs shop, which is attended by the students to finance their activities. One of my teammates bought a hoodie of his Alma Mater.

Shop with Stanford clothing. — Then you can say that you studied in Stanford.

Dorms buildings in the background and lots of grass in the foreground. — The dorms.

First Weekend: San Francisco

To plan for our free weekends, we asked our US teammates for interesting places to go. Of them, Andy Frazer^[3] had the more experience traveling the nearest places and gave us a lot of tips for our planning. So, we set sail for San Francisco.

Caltrain

For our first visit to San Francisco, we used the Caltrain^[4]. Thankfully, we could park on our nearest station. Like someone said us, probably a lot less people would use it if you couldn’t. I really liked that you can buy the tickets on a machine, so you avoid people interaction.

Train taking a curve. — Arriving to the Caltrain terminal station.

Big clock in a train station hall. — San Francisco Station.

Embarcadero

Once we got off the train, we started to walk to the Embarcadero^[5]. In our walk, we passed by the San Francisco’s MoMA^[6]. While two of my teammates were doing an express visit to the expositions, the rest wandered the surroundings, including the Finance District. However, when we saw a security guard dressed up with more style than we could ever hope to achieve, we remembered our Third World origins and came back top the MoMA to rendezvous with our teammates and went to lunch.

Walkway leading to some buildings, including MoMA. — At the background left, you can see the MoMA.

A Chinese newspapers dispenser. Maybe, the fact that we were near China Town could explain this sighting.

Sing Tao Daily newspaper dispenser. On the front page you can see a politicians meeting. — One of the many tall building we encountered on our walk.

After restoring energies, we resumed our path to the Embarcadero. For mysterious reasons that are beyond my understanding^[7], piers are always filled with tourists traps. However, we already had tips of the place, so we avoided the traps relatively well (except for the Pier 39’s souvenir shops).

When we arrived to the Embarcadero, we got to the ferry terminal, but a ferry tour wasn’t on the plan, so we skipped it.

Ferry departure time table with Lao Tzu’s quote: ’‘Nothing is softer or more flexible than water yet nothing can resist it’’. — *’‘Nothing is softer or more flexible than water yet nothing can resist it’’* – Lao Tzu.

Street musician playing the alto sax. — It is not the United States without blues.

In his tips, Andy mentioned the Pier 7, which he said it is a very popular location for wedding photography. Said and done, when we passed there was a photo session in course.

I didn’t have a good feeling about the photographer after he used a single speedlight to light a group photo in the middle of a sunny day. I hope he knew what he was doing.

After a long walk, we finally arrived to the most important pier (or at least the most touristic): Pier 39. Here, we first met the Penny Machines. This machines press a design on a penny coin for ¢50 (so, in total you spend ¢51). Also here, my teammates fell victim to the siren’s song of the souvenir shops.

Crab statue with plant covering its shell. — The crab is the icon of Pier 39.

Four people looking at a 1¢-coin press. — My teammates admiring this wonder of engineering.

Seagull standing on a wooden railing with a harbor on the background. — A seagull watching the horizon on Pier 41.

Panoramic photo of a harbor on the sunset. — The view of the Fisherman’s Wharf from Pier 41.

After a quick stop at Pier 41 to take some photos, we went to our next destination: Fort Mason.

Following the suggestion of another US teammate, Derek, we ended our journey at The Interval^[8], a theme bar/museum based on “long term thinking”. On this line, they have a library that is supposed to gather the knowledge necessary to rebuild civilization (of course, only based on a western/european view) or a system of bets where you can bet with an equally pretentious friend on things that will happen after you both die (like if the Santa Teresa’s Sanctuary^[9] will be finished before Universidad de Chile has its own stadium^[10]).

Four people sitting in a bar. There are bottles with liquid hanging from the ceiling. — If you pay a lot of money, you can have one of the ceiling bottles with your name.

Outside of the bar. — Like every bar, I like this one better from the outside.

Academy of Sciences

Andy is also a volunteer at California Academy of Sciences^[11], so we paid a visit per his suggestion (and hoping to see him diving with the fish, but we didn’t). The Academy is located at the Golden Gate Park^[12], which his huge and it seems to take a few days if you want to do a thorough visit, but didn’t have that much time. As always, since everyone moves by car, parking spots are scarce, so our first mission was to find a free parking spot.

People playing baseball. — As we got off the car, we were received by a typical scene from the US.

Before going into details about our visit to the Academy of Sciences, I will summarize the experience as: I would like to have thins that nice in Chile (even though I admit that in the recent years, museums have gotten way better).

Tyrannosaurus skeleton. — My kid self would be crazy if it saw this at a museum entrance.

We started our visit by the diorama area. In this case, they represented African ecosystems. On the same hall, the Academy has the pool with the African penguins^[13], which Andy told us he had cleaned a few times.

Diorama of an African scene with two oryx. — 100% real Oryx 1 link megaupload.

African penguins tank. — The African penguins pool.

Two penguins. One of them appears to be whispering something to the other. — Hey, Listen!

Next, we went to the Planetarium to watch a presentation about Dark Matter, introduced by the voice of Neil de Grasse Tyson himself. During the presentation, one of my teammates fell into the arms of Morpheus, thanks to the very comfortable seats. After delving in the mysteries of dark matter and skipping the earthquake simulator, since a little floor movement is Chileans’ bread-and-butter, we went to see the Pterosaurs exposition.

Pterosaur skull. It has big cavities so it is lighter. — Quetzalcoatlus northropi’s skull.

Pterosaur life size model hanging from the ceiling. — A scale model on the ceiling, remembering us the span of these creatures.

Diorama with two pterosaurs fishing. — Pterosaurs lived on marine habitats, occupying ecological niches similar to our contemporary seabirds.

After visiting the exposition, we went to the biodome. The main attraction are the variety of its butterflies. If you are lucky, you can even watch butterflies emerging from their chrysalids. Although, most of the butterflies are very active, the installations have for for them, so you can observe them more easily. They also have life-sized models that are so good you only notice because they are still.

Blue butterfly with white dots feeding from a flower. — A key moment to photograph butterflies is when they are feeding.

Brown butterfly with eye-like spots feeding from an orange. — They have fountains where you can get a closer view of the butterflies.

Orange butterfly feeding from a flower. — Here you can clearly see the butterfly’s proboscis. This is not a subliminal message so you watch Butterfly’s Tongue.

Last but no least, we paid a visit the Academy’s aquarium. The aquarium has a great variety of species, including Finding Nemo Dory’s specie: the blue surgeon fish^[14]. On the more exotic side, they had some abyssal fish. Finally, the Academy’s symbol, located in the main hall, Claude, the albino crocodile.

Albino crocodile resting on his tank. — Claude, the albino crocodile.

Botanical Garden

After our visit to the Academy of Sciences, we planned to visit the Golden Gate. However, the plan was to arrive by dusk, so we had some free time before going. So, in the meantime, we did a quick tour by the San Francisco Botanical Garden^[15]. The Garden has variety of flowers from all over the world, separated by climate, and they even have Chilean flora.

Pale pink flower with nine pointed petals. — *Dahlia merckii*.

Bird on a wooden bridge looking to a water pond. — A great blue heron (*Ardea herodias*) walks calmly by the Garden.

Golden Gate

Our first stop at the Golden Gate was on the North Coast Vista. After a short pause and that some South American tourists recognized our Chilean accent, we set our course to the bridge itself. After a few minutes of walking and some varied quality photos we returned to our car to go to our final destination: Battery Spencer, an abandoned military fort that now serves as a viewpoint. From there, you have an awesome view of the Golden Gate, with the city of San Francisco on the background. Andy suggested the place to take night photos of the bridge, so we took the suggestion.