First thing is not to expect much. Your first reaction will be 'Is this it? Suburbia and McMansions?'. And you will be right. The factor that makes it a 'tech

First thing is not to expect much. Your first reaction will be 'Is this it? Suburbia and McMansions?'. And you will be right. The factor that makes it a 'tech hub' is the people (take them away and Palo Alto becomes utterly uninteresting), so you might want to see if any interesting tech types have time to meet with you (if you care to). Having said that, this thread might have things of interest to see: http://www.quora.com/Palo-Alto-CA/How-shall-I-spend-my-day-in-Palo-Alto http://www.quora.com/Palo-Alto-CA/How-shall-I-spend-my-day-i... Since you're there for a while you should also take the train to San Francisco. Most of the startups there are in SoMa, so you should walk around there if you want to get a feel for what it's like.