Menlo Park is a small, affluent city on the San Francisco Peninsula, wedged between Palo Alto and Redwood City. It is best known as the headquarters of Meta (formerly Facebook) — the Meta campus at 1 Hacker Way is one of the largest single-floor offices in the world — but long before that it was home to SRI International, the research institute where the computer mouse was invented and the first ARPANET message was sent. Kepler's Books, a beloved independent bookstore on El Camino Real since 1955, and Cafe Barrone next door anchor the most active corner of the downtown.
The downtown along Santa Cruz Avenue and El Camino Real is pleasant and walkable, with restaurants, cafes, and boutique shops centred on the Menlo Park station. The tree-lined residential streets have a quiet, suburban character that belies the city's role at the heart of Silicon Valley. Stanford University's campus begins at the western edge of town, with Sand Hill Road running along the foothills — home to more venture capital firms per mile than anywhere else on earth. The Google Garage at 232 Santa Margarita Avenue, where Page and Brin started the company in 1998, is a short walk away.
The Allied Arts Guild — a collection of craft studios and gardens in a Spanish Colonial courtyard — is worth a detour, as is El Palo Alto, the ancient redwood tree at the Palo Alto border that gave the region its name. The Great Spirit Path trail through Mitchell Park is a quieter find.