I am here for few days. The bay area is always nice – sunny (except yesterday, when it rained a lot). The view of the bay area seems to be very stable, at least for a visitor like me. I don’t see new buildings, and I don’t see too much changes, event the name of the shops on the University Ave, in Palo Alto.
The change of this place is all about the inside. The up and down of companies, the shift of talent from one to another (like to Google, and to Facebook), and the sentiment of financial marketing all change greatly, and that changes (part of) the world. You just don’t see it from the buildings, and environment.
The whole area is a nice place to be in. I haven’t been to many places. I am familiar with Redmond/Seattle area, and I know bay area well. Visited New York once, and some other cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego. So far, nothing is like San Francisco and bay area – the weather, the spread out of the city, and even the traffic. I love the bay area most.
The God seems to be very favorable to this area. Not many places (at least based on my limited travel experience) has the best of a lot of aspects. Just to name a few.
- Good weather
- Sea, sea shore, and beach!
- Bay that you can sail.
- Lakes
- Mountains
- Wine (Napa)
- Hi-tech companies, and great job opportunities (Silicon Valley!)
- Financial center (San Francisco, kind of)
- Good location with easy access to the world (port, west coast to connect to Asia, in the middle of west coast shoreline)
- Diversified culture
As I said, bay area is always my best source of inspiration, and I feel at home in this area. I do need to come here more often, I think about this every time I am here.
A lot of Americans agree with you. That’s why it is one of most expensive places to live in the U.S. For me it is a nice place to visit, but too crowded.
Ditto with Pat’s comment. I lived in the Bay Area for 25 years and San Francisco is one of the Great Cities of the World. However you need to spend more time in the city then your prospective about weather might change. I quote Mark Twain “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”. Try the traffice on highway 101 you might find it close to Shanghai.
Palo Alto area is very beautiful. If you have time go to Atherton. Its about a 15 minute drive. Its the richest city in the Bay Area. It is mostly magnificent tree lined streets with mansions and homes of all sizes and descriptions. It was always my pleasure to walk through the streets on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. You would believe you are in the countryside quiet with so many magnifient homes. Just south of you is Cupertino numerous excellent Asian restaurants. Of course San Franscisco has every food one could want made to perfection. Although its a bit of a drive from where you are staying. Enjoy your time there.
Thanks Nick for sharing the tips.
Hi there, I just spent 11 days in China (including Shanghai) and stumbled across your blog!
I lived for two years in the Bay Area (Mountain View, San Mateo, Sunnyvale) and I think your observations are spot-on. I just want to make sure to temper your enthusiasm with some of the challenges of living in SF/Peninsula/South Bay:
* A completely messed up state government and state budget
* Very high cost of living
* Very high taxes
* The beaches up there really aren’t that great
* A barely-unified public transportation system
* Bad air quality because it’s in a valley
* Forest fires in the Santa Cruz mountains making air quality even worse
I would argue that we here in Boston have many of the great parts of the bay area with fewer of the drawbacks. With that said, I definitely plan to move back to San Francisco one day soon :-)
Enjoy your time out there. I’ve always referred to it as “God’s Blessed Land,” mostly because of the weather and the fact that whatever you plant in the ground will grow and bear fruit.
Varun makes several very good points, (although our air quality has improved dramatically over the past decade to where we rarely have serious smog conditions any more) but having grown up in Boston and living now in Cupertino, I would argue (cheerfully, but vehemently) that the mosquitoes and humidity which plague the East Coast in summer are a deal breaker. The availability of lobster and delicious seasonal New England tomatoes *almost* makes up for it…but not quite :-)
The astonishing weather that day you mentioned, Jian Shuo was something like a freak of Nature. On fact, it’s entirely possible that Mother Nature was having a big argument with God that day, and the rain was her way of winning!
Bottom line? You definitely should come back more often :-)
Take a short walk over to East Palo Alto. I think you would never want to come back again, assuming you walk out of there alive
I found that the weather in San Diego is a bit better than that in our Bay Area. And we can not really swim in the beaches here.