Yesterday, our first day in California, we went down to Stanford and Palo Alto in the afternoon. I’m afraid it was all quite repellent. Stanford is not an attractive campus to my mind, it gives off a distinct ‘we own you’ feeling and it was probably the first time I’d ever been to a university where I didn’t feel at home. Palo Alto’s university avenue is clean, slick and full of startup incubators, and the general air of self-satisfaction is oppressive, to say the least.
Perhaps my favourite bit, however, was going into a gadget shop which claimed to sell new designs by startups but also included items like Thermomix brand blenders. Here, there was a women’s startup section where one of the items on sale was a headband that read your brainwaves so as to optimise your meditation practice. Delightful.
Today, in the morning, we went into the city itself, starting with Golden Gate park. The morning was a tiny bit disastrous as there was no parking and I found myself caught between what I know the Gentleman Friend would want and what I knew my aunt would want. The sort of situation that causes my brain to fizzle like the Maybot’s. Eventually we parted ways and the GF and I went to the Botanical Garden (mediocre) and then reconvened for coffee. We parted again and this time the GF and I took an Uber to walk through the streets and do a bit of trendy shopping. SF is very nice indeed, a world away from Palo Alto, though I imagine many of the people are the same. We encountered the Tartine Bakery and picked up a massive loaf of bread and a couple of other bits and pieces, then found a chocolate shop which had nice little taster bits for sale. At one point the GF looked up and said ‘ah yes, the Castro. If I am not mistaken, this was the heart of gay San Francisco back in the 70s.’ I looked around at the rainbow flags everywhere and could only respond with a modest ‘I see.’
Finally we found ourselves in the Mission and queued up at one of the famous burrito spots. The burrito was indeed excellent – I do wonder why outside home territory food never has a whole hearted fire and flame. This made every other burrito I’ve had appear a pale shadow of the real thing. Being American it was also immense, so we eventually we staggered out, now dreading the lemon meringue cake and the apricot tart for later.
On returning home (via the filthy BART – another American peculiarity, the fundamental disrespect for public transportation) we watched Roma and I’m afraid I fell asleep partway through.