Palo Alto

As a med school student, far from home in MI, my roommate JK generously offered to let me spend Thanksgiving at his house.
So, my 1984 Thanksgiving was covered by the very hospitable Krieger family.

My grandparents lived there in the 1950s and we went to visit them from our home in Sunnyvale. I was so impressed by Stanford University, I decided at the age of six that I would someday go to college there.

Even though we moved away from California to Indiana in 1958, I held onto my dream. I applied to Stanford when I was a high school senior and was accepted, but I didn’t receive enough financial aid to afford the out-of-state tuition. Instead, I did my undergraduate work at DePauw.

Then, in 1998, I had an opportunity to attend a graduate course in professional publishing at Stanford. I jumped at the chance. We lived in a dorm, ate in the cafeteria, studied in the classrooms and library, and shopped in the bookstore. I even got to walk on the turf of the old football stadium, swim in the outdoor pool and bicycle the streets of Palo Alto, so different from four decades earlier.

There will always be a special place in my heart for Stanford and Palo Alto, a location very much worth visiting.

It’s a nice place to visit if you’re in the area, but not worth a special trip.

go to rudys say hi to my man, have a beer and then come eat at the #11th restaurant in the bay area. Evvia…greek food and me, what a great combo.

visit the stanford theater.
eat at the creamery (a.k.a. peninsula fountain and grill)
go on long walks in stanford university.

really small town, but a great place.

Palo Alto (the whole peninsula) is a weird place. It’s not truly the suburbs, but you couldn’t call it a city either. I guess I’ll continue calling it ‘urban suburbia.’

West Palo Alto, very pretty, posh, scenic, and small-town comfy. East Palo Alto, not so good. But hey, there’s an Ikea (:

...but I wouldn’t call this a destination spot, unless you’re an Apple fan and want to visit the “mother store” ;)

I love it. Sun, rain, smile, family, community.

Palo Alto has few, if any, redeeming qualities.