I'll use this doc here to aggregate some extra information for people visting the Bay Area for the TC39 meeting.
Feel free to add advice at the bottom as a comment!!
- San Jose Airport: smaller but great airport, really close to the meeting, super conveninent. Smaller than SFO so fewer flights, but if you find anything landing there I'd use it. Could save you a lot of headache worrying about traffic to SFO.
- San Francisco Airport: bigger airport, farther from the meeting. Huge, so a lot more options to fly in and out. About 45 mins away from the meeting without traffic and 1h30 hours with rush hour traffic.
- Mountain View:
- pros: cheaper, closer to the meeting and closer to the dinner party
- cons: small downtown
- Hampton Inn & Suites Mountain View (2 min uber/taxi/lyft, 10 min shuttle or 20 min walk to the meeting and 9 min walk to downtown)
- America’s Best Value Mountain View (2 min uber/taxi/lyft, 20 min train, 10 min walk to downtown)
- Other options at El Camino Real
- Palo Alto:
- pros: lively downtown, stanford campus nearby, more stuff to do
- cons: farther from the meeting (e.g. implies taxi/uber/lyft), farther from the dinner party
- Garden Court Hotel (18 min taxi/uber/lyft or ~40 min train to the meeting)
- San Francisco (much farther from the meeting, but lots of things around):
- pros: lots of stuff to do (museums, bars, restaurants, etc)
- cons: assume ~1h45 min each way (~1h15 to/from caltrain and ~30 to/from meeting) with public transportation or ~1h15min driving. Not very practical for the meeting IMHO if you flying here, but possible (lots of members living in SF will be commuting daily - so, possible).
Lots of cool stuff around here. Here are some of my favorites:
- California Academy of Sciences (4 hours)
- Museum of Modern Art (4 hours)
- Monterey Acquarium (4 hours)
- Computer History Museum (2 hours)
- Stanford (Tours, Cantor Museum and Mall) (3 hours)
- De Young Museum (contemporary art)
- Cantor Museum (30 mins)
- NASA Ames Museum (30 mins)
- Intel Museum (15 mins)
- Google Store
- HP garage (never been)
- Apple garage (never been)
- Apple Park Visitor Center
There is a lot of stuff for kids in the area. Here are some of my favorites (I have a 4yo and a 1yo). Feel free to ping me for personal recommendations!
- Shoreline Park - Mountain View (nearby)
- Children's Museum of San Jose (~15 min drive)
- Happy Hollow San Jose (~15 min drive)
- Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo (~15 min drive)
- California Academy of Sciences (awesome, one of my favorite places for kids)
- Gilroy Gardens (full day, ~1 hour drive)
- Exploratorium (SF)
- Santa Cruz Board Walk (~45 min drive)
- Monterey Acquarium (~1 hour drive)
- Day at Monterey and Carmel (~1 hour drive)
- Kids friendly downtowns: los altos, los gatos and campbell
Napa is far, but there are really neat local wineries that I think is worth checking out if you are into wine:
- Picchetti Winery (small but great wines, good vibe)
- Moutain Winery (big, beautiful)
- Garrod Farms Winery (super small)
- Ridget Winery (never been but heard good things)
- Look at for Santa Cruz Wineries
If you're looking for fun, family-friendly things to do, a friend (and former intern! 🎉 ) of mine works at The Tech, a museum in downtown San Jose, 20-25 min away.