California Part 3: Palo Alto

Read these first :)
Part 1: San Francisco | Part 2: Yosemite National Park
Sorry for the long delay in updating; been busy with moving into my off-campus house and school stuff. I also didn't want to use up the bandwidth at my house (there's 12 people sharing the internet :/), so yeah.

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On this leg of the trip, we left Yosemite and we are continuing to head south to Palo Alto.
The main attraction in Palo Alto is Stanford University. I don't remember doing anything significantly exciting during this leg of the trip, but nonetheless there are plenty of pictures to blog about, so here it is!

 We stumbled upon a farmer's market in downtown Palo Alto. I must say that this was the highlight of my trip to this region.

I must say that the plums, peaches, and nectarines they sold here were the best I've ever had in my life. Juicy, sweet and all organic. I've also never seen pluots in Canada, and they were delicious.

They had a million different types of funky, colourful tomatoes.

 Also all kinds of hot peppers.

 Funky squash and stuff like that too. This one's righteously named "space ship"

 I like how they drew pictures on the signs.

 
 
 They had samples of all the fruits they sold. I also like that because you can try everything without having to buy it all. It's also awesome because you know exactly what you're getting and how it tastes.

 Peach heaven. If you're a huge peach/plum/nectarine/pluot fan, you seriously have to make a trip down here and try everything. California grows amazing quality fruits and vegetables (as you can see).

 Stanford U. Wow, this campus was amazing. Sorry Canada, but none of your universities can even scratch the surface...

 View from the top. This wasn't all by the way. The buildings with the orange rooftops are part of Stanford.

Buildings to the left of the previous picture. Multiply this picture x 6 until you get back to the previous picture from the right. That's how massive this campus was.

 Orange tree in the middle of campus. 
 Is this really a school?! The architecture here was pretty unique too.

 Imagine walking down these halls to your class. 
 Stanford Memorial Church within the campus. Built in 1903 if I'm not mistaken. If you'd like to read more about it, Wikipedia is your best friend.

 Wow right? Golly. Stanford's amazing.

 It's really hard to read from the picture, but here's what it says:
"A noble ambition is among the most helpful influences of student life, and the higher this ambition is, the better. No man can work well unless he can speak as the Great Master did of the joy set before Him.
And this leads to the greatest of all safeguards and the most encouraging of all stimulating influences to a noble life--that is, the power of personal religion. We need something outside of and beyond ourselves. Remember, you are not your own--you are bought with the precious blood of Jesus."

Love this quote. Too bad someone vandalized it with chalk.

"And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love." -1 Corinthians 13:13.
I wonder how long it took for them to put these mosaics together. And I shall remind you again: this is part of Stanford's campus.

 Lunchtime. We bought the food from the farmer's market. Here's rotisserie chicken. Nothing amazing.

 Wasabi and kimchi hot dog. It was pretty good actually--don't mind the appearance. It's been wrapped up for too long and it looks all soggy.

 Tamales. I was a little disappointed about these...they tasted really bland.

 Fisker Karma at Stanford Shopping Centre.

 At night we went to my parents' friend's house near Silicon Valley. The people you see in this picture all went to highschool together. My mom (3rd from the left) were best friends with the person to the left of her. They haven't seen each other in decades and it was nice that they got to catch up with each other. My brothers and I were understandably bored (we chose to play with the cat instead), but it was nice to see that they still had so much to talk about after all these years.  It makes  me wonder what will happen to my friends and I in the next 20 years. Are we all going to spread out and not see each other for that long? It's a little depressing.  But everyone has lives to live and choices to make, right?

 Dakochan the cat. She didn't like strangers but we insisted on playing with her anyways. Result: she hissed at us a couple of times and lunged at my little brother. Nevertheless, she was still cute.

Where we have traveled so far (Roughly). At this point, we've driven around 400 miles.

That's it for Palo Alto! Next stop: Salinas, Monterey, Carmel, and the Pacific Coast Highway (the most beautiful road ever).

-e.m.