After a week in the city it's time to head south. Today was the day that I had agreed to pick up the car so I caught the Caltrain down to Redwood City once again, this time carrying all of my gear. I handed over my wads of cash and the car was mine. This was both good and bad as I know had a car but I also had to drive the thing somewhere.

Redwood City is just north of Palo Alto, a city in Silicon Valley, and the home of Stanford University. I had organised to meet a friend here so I decided to try and stay somewhere nearby. Initially I was looking at cheap motels but prices were insane. The cheapest I could find was around $150 USD for a one start place. Instead I decided to look at Airbnb and quickly found a room just north of Palo Alto in Menlo Park (the home of Facebook).

Thankfully this place was just a few miles south of where I was picking up the car down a long straight road. Pulling out for the first time a bit scary. All of my instincts are now wrong when driving. I managed to survive the 15 minute journey and arrived at the house where I'd be staying.

The host was really nice and welcoming and invited me to a BBQ he was having that night with some of his friends. The room was great and probably much nicer than what I would have had in a motel, and for around a third of the price. It was a 25 minute walk to Stanford so I set off to visit my friend Lili.

I immediately felt more relaxed an comfortable here compared to San Francisco. Everything was clean and tidy and there were no hordes of homeless people that I had become used to in the city. I suspect that it's probably a pretty well off area judging by the houses and the fancy cars I saw.

Stanford University is amazing. The architecture and the layout seems so perfect. There are graduations happening this week so there were plenty of people around taking photos and looking around so we didn't stand out too much. The university was huge. We walked through it for about an hour and hardly covered any of it.

Walking around was pretty tiring so I soon headed back to my accommodation and BBQ. It was really cool to be able to meet some locals. They were all from different parts of the country and had lots of recommendations for me.

Tomorrow morning I'll be getting kitted out for camping before heading of to Monterey on the coast.