Palo Alto: Wrap Your Brain Around It

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The birthplace of Silicon Valley is at 367 Addison Ave. It's nothing more than a nondescript garage, but it's where Stanford alums William Hewlett and David Packard, of Hewlitt-Packard fame, tinkered around and launched the high-tech age.

Combine that high-tech influence and wealth with that of the university -- and you've got yourself a mighty fine little town.

A Palo Alto Web site lists 99 restaurants. You can blow some serious bucks at Wolfgang Puck's Spago, or watch the world stroll by as you sit outside Francis Ford Coppola's Cafe Niebaum-Coppola, or mix it up with the students on a budget at places like the Rose and Crown pub. Between performances at the university and those in downtown venues -- including the Lucie Stern and Cubberley theaters -- you can usually find something going on for any taste. (Just be warned, the Dalai Lama lecture is sold out.) Alternately, you can always just wander through some of the stores and galleries. On the first Friday of every month, the town's Pacific Art League sponsors a gallery walk so you can meet the artists while sipping a local vintage.

The minute you hit Palo Alto, it strikes you: This is what a downtown should feel like. Beyond the trees along the streets, the easy mix of old and new buildings, the cleanliness and free parking, its hard to pinpoint the elements that make it so inviting, but city planners thinking of redeveloping an area that failed should come by and try to figure it out.

I should consider myself lucky to have had a school year here. But every time I return, I am consumed with a sense of yearning.

The place makes me yearn to be rich and young and full of promise. I want to live forever in a beautiful, upscale area with nearly perfect weather. I want one of those $3 million Palo Alto bungalows for my very own. Or what the hey, one of the $10 million California-style mansions within walking distance of a meal at Spago's or a massage at the fabulous, Asian-inspired spa Watercourse Way. I wonder what the world would look like if everyone had wealth and the education essential to spending it well, with class.

Still, if you don't have the means to live in Palo Alto but come upon the chance to spend a couple of days here, take it.