A Walk through Palo Alto

Welcome, surviving reader. There isn't much to do these days other than work, walk and eat, and that's what we've been spending most of our time doing. So today I want to take you on the walk we set out on today, through Palo Alto, down to J. Pearce Mitchell Park and back again.

The first thing to note is that spring has definitely sprung here. Everything is in bloom and greenery is busting out everywhere.

Most of Palo Alto's streets are named after poets, so a couple of streets up from us is Cowper (actually pronounced 'Cooper', although I'm not sure if anyone really does that).

Notably one of the things we'll have to readjust to on return to the UK is how to cross the road. Here, at least out here in the South Bay, you can wander out into an intersection (that's a junction in the UK) and cars will give way to you, as they're supposed to by law. You tend to end up relying on that, and motorists give you weird looks if you wait for them; quite the opposite of the UK.

Palo Alto is notably pretty green; there are often flowers in the verges and from the air, it looks like houses have been dropped into an orchard.

There's a story behind every single sign

There are lots of immigrant species here; neither eucalyptus nor palm trees are native to the area, but were brought in when the town started to sprout up in the 19th century.

California is a bubble within the US; the Bay Area is a bubble within that; and Palo Alto is a bubble within the South Bay. There's all sorts of crazy malarkey which is commonplace here; you'll frequently see some nutter careering down the street on an electric skateboard, or indeed a motorized armchair. By those standards, a giant soapstone cat is relatively tame.

Not sure about the Easter bunny though?

The South Bay is punctuated by various creeks, which funnel rainwater down from the hills into the Bay. Dry for much of the year, the creeks get a bit more exciting when it rains. Now, this is the US, which means there's no problem which can't be solved with a bit more concrete. Pesky creeks getting a bit unpredictable? No problem, concrete them in!

As a story, the three little pigs wouldn't have worked here; or rather, it would have been abridged, because building houses out of wood is apparently just fine. In fact it might even be better in a regular earthquake zone where there isn't a lot of wind or rain and it rarely freezes.

There are plenty of churches of all denominations here in Palo Alto, although architecturally they tend to be a bit of a mix, all having been built in the last 150 years. (Note: I know an awful lot of churches in the UK are Victorian gothic revival and not much older, but they're a rough impersonation of a 600-year-old style and thus pretty uniform. You will not see anything resembling either gothic or gothic revival here, or indeed anything built out of limestone, which I guess explains why I go a bit dewey-eyed when Inspector Morse comes on PBS here)

And of course, with it being spring, there is blossom everywhere; the place is punctuated by cherry, peach, apple, orange and lemon trees, plus a bunch of stuff I don't know the name of. That results in a lot of these:

That brings us to food. We walked a bit more than 6 miles today, so I thought we deserved a bit of a treat: a burger from this place, still open for takeout:

I'll probably start doing restaurant reviews here because there isn't much else to talk about. Anyway, Wahlburgers is a small burger chain started by Mark Wahlberg (from New Kids on the Block and some awful action films; nope, I hadn't really heard of him either), where they serve significantly up-market burgers. This is not some slapped-together grease and plastic cheese (oh all right; the cheese is still plastic, but hey, this is the US), it's a restaurant-quality burger which is nicely presented and cooked. They also do something called an Impossible Burger, which claims to be made entirely from plants; as far as I can tell, it's soya mince flavoured to taste roughly like an Oxo cube. It's reasonable enough, but you're not going to mistake it for meat any time soon.

Here in Santa Clara County, the virus response is actually going pretty well: our lockdown was relatively early, the number of cases is relatively small and is dropping. Of course, we'd love to be resuming our adventures, but for now we're safe and sound and able to carry on with some degree of normality, so there's plenty to be thankful for. Oh, except for the word normalcy, which is American for normality, and sets my teeth on edge like you wouldn't believe!