Google garage, Menlo Park. First non-dorm location for Google (née BackRub). Susan Wojcicki rented her garage to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who later married Wojcicki’s sister.
Atherton. Tidy, upscale residential community—the Greenwich of Silicon Valley. Home to Sheryl Sandberg and Eric Schmidt as well as Willie Mays and Shirley Temple.
165 University Avenue, Palo Alto. Known as the “Lucky Office.” First grown-up office for both Google and PayPal.
Stanford Theatre. Gorgeous 1920s-vintage movie theater, restored in 1980s by David Woodley Packard, son of H-P founder. Uses analog technology to show classic films.
University Avenue, Palo Alto. Main street. Come for the Apple Store, stay for the many opportunities to eat wraps.
Il Fornaio, Palo Alto. Restaurant of choice—though a chain—for the likes of Steve Jobs and John Doerr. “Gluten-free pasta available.” (For a true local joint, try the Palo Alto Creamery.)
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Hewlett-Packard garage, Palo Alto. Where the elder David Packard and William Hewlett designed H-P’s first product, an oscillator. Birthplace of the Silicon Valley garage meme.
Old Palo Alto. Leafy residential neighborhood, full of Craftsman-style houses. Along with adjacent neighborhoods such as Crescent Heights and Professorville, home to many Valley celebrities, including Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Mark Zuckerberg.
Town & Country Village, Palo Alto. Quaint upscale shopping center. Features Calafia Café, started by former Google chef Charlie Ayers. Also Hobee’s, sachet-scented restaurant famous for coffee cake and for being frequented by Marc Andreessen.
Stanford University. Founded in 1891 on his 8,000-plus-acre horse farm by railroad tycoon Leland Stanford. A Valley incubator in terms of research, real estate, and entrepreneurial encouragement. All that, plus Heisman Trophy front-runner Andrew Luck.
Gates Computer Science Building, Stanford. Where Google got its grad-school start. Funded by someone who dropped out of Harvard.
Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park. Iconic site (akin to Wall Street as both a place name and descriptor) of numerous V.C. offices.
Rosewood Sand Hill Hotel, Menlo Park. Another prominent Valley hotel, also with a freeway view.
Buck’s restaurant, Village Pub, Woodside. V.C. hangouts where numerous deals have been cut, including, legend has it, those for Netscape, Hotmail, PayPal, and Facebook. Former features wacky décor; latter is more sober, artisanal, with a serious wine list, though an under-age Mark Zuckerberg ordered a Sprite on his first visit.
San Andreas Fault. The ultimate “game changer.”
“The Dish,” Stanford. Old radio telescope located in university’s “open space” foothills area. Sentinel-like landmark.
PARC (formerly Xerox PARC), Palo Alto. Research center where, at its original location, the mouse as we know it was invented. Also the Ethernet and laser printers.
Facebook offices, Palo Alto. Company now moving into larger Menlo Park offices recently vacated by Sun Microsystems.
Antonio’s Nut House, Palo Alto. Locally famous dive bar. Maybe the least Silicon Valley-ish establishment in Silicon Valley.
Groupon office, Palo Alto. Silicon Valley HQ of Chicago firm.
Tesla Motors HQ, Palo Alto. Maker of “premium electric vehicles,” driven by the likes of Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
Shockley lab, Mountain View. Site where William Shockley, winner of Nobel Prize for co-inventing the transistor, launched Shockley Semiconductor in 1955. Alumni of the short-lived company went on to found Fairchild and Intel. Shockley went on to become a notorious racist and eugenicist.
First Facebook house, Palo Alto. The one with the zip line.
Apple garage, Los Altos. Boyhood home of Steve Jobs. Where he and Steve Wozniak designed their first home computers in the late 1970s.
Apple HQ, Cupertino. Formal street address is 1 Infinite Loop.
Googleplex, Mountain View. Cute, Google-ish name for its HQ.
Castro Street, Mountain View. Main commercial drag. Lots of great Asian restaurants, drawing techies for lunch, even Googlers tired of the free food on offer at the Googleplex. Try the dim sum at Fu Lam Mum.
Yahoo! HQ, Sunnyvale. Also founded at Stanford. Launched meme of cute tech-company names (née Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web).
