Went down with a friend to Palo Alto yesterday to do a little architecture walk and check out the Stanford Campus. It had been supposed to rain all day, but we got lucky and it stayed dry all day.
We started out having breakfast at the Palo Alto Creamery, a 50s style diner.


Then we walked around downtown. Saw a Julia Morgan building, Hostess House

And the Caltrain station, done in streamline moderne style


And then some great buildings along University Avenue...
The Stanford Theater

The Varsity Theater, most recently a Borders and now sadly empty

The courtyard of the Varsity theater

An awesome succulent wall - I want to do this at home! 
The post office, in a really pretty Spanish Colonial style


And a Julia Morgan house
And a Bernard Maybeck house
Lately, I'm really into both Morgan and Maybeck buildings. I don't get out of San Francisco very often, but luckily they both designed lots of places in SF and I'm slowly starting to see them and some out of the city as well.

A pretty Queen Anne mansion
A lovely courtyard on historic Ramona Street, a natioanl historic district with great Spanish Colonial buildings

Then we headed over to Stanford, where my friend went for grad school many years ago. I had never been there and it's incredibly beautiful.
The entrance to the quad

There were fountains everywhere


Thomas Welton Art Gallery

Memorial Chapel


The campus is enormous and we were exhausted from the walk through downtown, so we checked out the bookstore, then went to the cute Coupa Cafe for a very late lunch.
It was a beautiful day and I'm so happy that I got to see Palo Alto with my friend, who lived there for a year. He also had a great time and says he now sees all of these buildings that he knew with a new light. Can't wait for the next excursion!
