Palo Alto, California

[RestedTraveler]

A few photos from Downtown Palo Alto...ENJOY!!!

I'm amazed at how similar University Avenue in Downtown Palo Alto, CA is to Main Street in Downtown Greenville, SC.

[richyb83]

ENJOYED Nice pics, thanks for sharing! What a great looking downtown with the tree-lined streets, shops and theatre. The park benches set it off. The high-rise looks cool too. What's the speed limit?? 25mph?

[convulso]

you should see it at night, richyb - a very alive chaos of ornamental white lights...the street seems to hum and vibrate a little bit, even when it's uncrowded. that town has got the lighting thing down! i like santa barbara's state street at night, too - it and palo alto remind me a little of each other at night (though SB has the uniform, consistent repetition of mission style architecture, block after block, which distinguishes it in the daytime).

shoot me for saying it, though - but i think UCSB has a more dramatic setting than stanford. nothing like being yards away from a sand cliff down to the pacific. i came very close to going off the edge the first time i was at UCSB, because i arrived at night during a break. few lights; dead campus, waves from below giving a very disorienting sound-reference (they sound so far away because of the vertical drop, but the ocean is right there.)

stanford's campus is beautiful - did you take any pics, RT? these of the town are awesome!

[RestedTraveler]

Thanks! Yes, the speed limit is 25, but it's posted in places on those signs that can be changed like a down marker in football. Dial-a-Speed-Limit!

The place does look great at night. The first time I saw it, in fact, was during the evening and I was without my tripod, so I had to go back during a daytime and take some photos. It struck me a great deal on a personal level because Downtown Palo Alto is nearly identical in many respects to Downtown Greenville, SC...the tree-lined street, the bump-out on-street parking, the white Christmas lights wrapped around the trees, the open-air restaurant fronts, the eclectic mix of stores and restaurants, the pedestrian energy, etc.

I did take some photos of Stanford's campus as well, but haven't posted them here. I've got two or three on my flickr site, if you're interested.

[GRDadof3]

Great pics! I like that "movie theater turned Borders bookstore". Cool!

I'd say this is what every "lifestyle village" developer is trying to recreate, with mixed success.

[BigKidD]

Great photos of University Avenue RestedTraveler. I find the street and area to be a little confining to get good photographs of the buildings, but it's easy to capture the street scenes. Also, Hamilton Ave. just parallel of University has a few nice blocks of buildings and of course city hall.

[NcSc74]

Kinda reminds me of downtown Fayetteville NC. Minus the beemers and benz.

Shot with NIKON D50 at 2007-01-11

Shot with NIKON D50 at 2007-01-11

Shot with NIKON D50 at 2007-01-11

[Chris-LA]

Yeah it also reminds me of Claremont, a suburb in the Los Angeles metro. Although Palo Alto seem to have gone more generic with the national chains where as Claremont (a college town) businesses are mostly independant. (see my recent photo thread)

BTW nice photos, I've always wondered what this city looked like other than me passing by on the highway on my way to San Francisco.