Places to Visit in the Bay Area

(Thomas Zscherpel & Uwe Schulte, Germany, 1993. Roberto Castagno, Italy, 1997)

Ask your HP manager where and for what you can get HP discount tickets. This year (1993) there were reduced tickets for ... almost everything.

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC)

Date: Wednesday or Friday
Price: free
Schedule: 1h Presentation and 1h site tour (lecture, slides and look at various experiments)
Location: 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park Direction: east of 280, exit "Sand Hill"
It is close and easy to find if you use the 280!
Contact: (415) 926-2204
Comment: Scientists study the structure of matter here by super-accelerating atoms into high-speed collisions with stationary objects and other atoms.

Final remark:
This tour is public, everybody can go there. The contact number is the SLAC office, they tell you the date of the next available tours and make reservations.

HP Wafer Fabrication

Date: by appointment
Time: 10:50am
Place: HP San Jose, 370 W. Trimble Road
Contacts: Mike Reichert, TelNet 435-4520
Comments:
For those who don't know what a wafer is: In the production line of computer chips a wafer is used for the production of the silizium heart of a chip. In fact the wafer is a set of silizium chips which is cut into small pieces after each silizium chip is tested. Then the chip is packed into ceramics or other materials, it gets legs, .... and then you can buy it in a electronic store or can find it in your computer, making or creating all the work for you !

Final Remark:
This tour was private organized. I got some connections to students working at the wafer site and I asked them, if they will help me to organize such a tour. The contact Mike Reichert was the engineer who was so nice to spend his lunch hour to show us the wafer fabrication.

NASA Ames Research Center

Date: Tue 9-7, 9:30 am
Price: free
Schedule: 2 hours includes Film, Wind Tunnel, Hangar ...
Location: Visitor Center, Parson Avenue, Mountain View
Final Remark: This tour is public, too.

And one place where you can go when there are no weekend plans and you don't want to stay at the beach all the time:

Winchester Mystery House

Date: every day
Price: about $ 12.50 (includes guided tour)
Location: San Jose, Winchester Bvld 525 (there are signs...)
Comment: meet some spirits in the Winchester Mystery House. This huge building was started 1884 by Lady Winchester and never finished. There you can see what a nuts widow does with an inherited fortune: build a crazy house (160 rooms and so on) and communicate with the spirits of those killed by Winchester guns. Nice garden.

Great America Theme Park

Date: every day, 10:00am - 11:00pm
Price: ~$18 HP discount
Location: north San Jose, Great American Blvd. (?), exit from 101 (see a map)
Remark: try to go there during the week or train your legs to wait in line ...

Mount Hamilton

If you like to enjoy at fantastic view over the Silicon Valley and watch a unique sunset, the 1.5 hours drive to the top of Mt. Hamilton is something you ABSOLUTELY should do!

Date: whenever you want
Price: it just nature, it's free!
Location: east of San Jose, take the Mt. Hamilton Rd of from Alum Rock Rd in North San Jose.
Remark: you really need about 1.5 hours to drive there because half of the way is a very(!) narrow street with lots of 15-miles curves.

Sacramento and the California State Rairoad Museum

by Roberto.Castagno, Italy, 1997

Even is you are not a railroad maniac (as I am), take a day to go and visit the museum. It is extremely well done, with a lot of rolling stock to be seen, plus a very complete story of the construction of the Southren Pacific Railroad from Oakland-Sacramento through the Sierra to Salt Lake City. A very fascinatig chapter of the story of America. You can also visit the old passenger station. Find information about schedules and special events (steam engines, special trains) on the California State Railroad Museum WEB site.

In addition to that, old Sacramento is quite nice (although full of souvenir shops ....grrrr). The Wells&Fargo museum is also interesting, telling the story of the oldest bank in the West and the Pony Express.

A good way of getting there is taking the train, the station is within walking distance from the museum and the old town. I went from Oakland to Sacramento on the California Zephyr (that continues until Chicago!), and came back on the "Capitol" directly to San Jose. Traveling by train really gives you a golden opportunity to see the country and meet people. You can check schedules on the WEB at the Amtrak site.

To finish with, I realized the Amtrak and United Airlines offer packages for a trip one way by train and one by plane. For about 300$ (depending on the season) you can travel to Denver, Colorado (through the Sierra and the desert canyons) and fly back to SFO. You might consider this trip for a 3-day week-end.