Day 15: The Google headquarters

We spent the night at the hotel at the Marina Beach, California, somewhere between Monterey and Santa Cruz. It was raining a little ( that kind of rain that humiliates you and makes your umbrella completely useless ) and some wind was blowing from the ocean. From our hotel window we should have been able to see the beach but all we could recognize was dark skies and pale sand dunes rotten by the wind. After breakfast we left the hotel and headed north, passed Watsonville and soon arrived at the famous Silicon Valley. The valley is quite vast stretching from north to south between the Diablo Range and San Mateo coastline hills. It is home to many of the world´s best Internet and IT companies. We headed for the Mountain View to see the headquarters of Google.

My son Lukasz at the Googleplex.

To our little surprise Google occupies a modest number of 3-stories high office buildings, not so fancy and not so special as you can expect from one of the world´s biggest companies. There were bicycles and scooters lying free on the grass in every possible corner of the lawn and beside the office entrances, some volleyball courts and a lot of green areas to keep the Googlers healthy and productive. Although nothing exceptional but I liked it. It was like actually "touching" and "seeing" the virtual reality of the Internet. I also hoped that the actual proximity to some of the best and beautiful Googlers minds will make me a little smarter. Maciek.