Luxury holidays in Palo Alto
In some ways, Palo Alto is a baby metropolis – while the Peninsula’s other major cities, San Francisco and San Jose were amassing skyscrapers pre-war, the nascent heart of Silicon Valley was a university town in a sea of farms and fields. However, that all changed in the Forties and Fifties as Stanford grew in standing (and size, sprawling out to encompass museums, galleries, concert venues and sculpture gardens), and Messrs Hewlett and Packard, William Shockley – and close by, Steves Jobs and Wozniak – started tinkering around in their garages, booting up a tech boom that’s only grown exponentially. The Meta campus and Googleplex may have moved since Palo Alto was their headquarters, albeit not very far, but these and it still fizzes with innovation. It’s a curious mix of flashy billionaires and less-so students, which has made the city’s social side a high-low mix of Michelin stars and ramen and hummus joints, lively cocktail hangs and wine-sniffing spots, and alt-indie shops neck and neck with blow-out brands.
When to go
The city can be sweltering in summer, and the city doesn’t die down, but when students are on summer break there are slightly fewer events. October is the most clement time to check out the sights.