I thought I’d post up some photos of our corporate housing here in Mountain View. I’ve never stayed in a furnished apartment before, it feels like living in a hotel for a really long time. The place they set us up in is very nice. Maybe a bit too nice – I don’t want to get too used to fancy digs when we don’t know where we’ll be living permanently yet.
I keep joking with Ann that we’re going to have to figure out where the ghetto of Silicon Valley is so we can afford the rent. Rents actually aren’t too terrible (about 2-3 times the prices in Cleveland), at least compared to real estate (5-6 times the prices in Cleveland).
Prices are coming down in California but not in this area, at least not yet. I’m having a hard time figuring out who buys all these houses when the average prices are in the $800,000 range. The job market is good and pay is a little higher but it’s not that much higher.
Here’s our living room. Not pictured is the wide-screen flat panel TV. And we have cable for the first time in a few years, so we can watch The Daily Show, Colbert Report, and Mythbusters. You can click on any of the pictures below to see larger versions at Flickr.
Here’s the bedroom, also very fancy. One thing we’ve noticed about California is that the buildings are really poorly insulated. That’s fine when it’s 70 degrees out but it’s been getting chilly at night so we’ve had to turn the heat on a couple times.
Here’s our dining area. We seem to still be in the habit of eating in front of the TV or computers, though.
We also took some pictures while wandering around Mountain View. Here’s the building where I’ll be working:
And here’s a rainbow. I tried to get a picture of the rainbow behind Google, but it disappeared right as we got there. I have no luck when it comes to setting up photos.
We saw a ridiculously tiny car parked outside one of the Google buildings. Ann was mad at me because I wouldn’t go pose by the car, but I felt weird running around the parking lot when I don’t actually work there yet.
Castro Street is a district here with all sorts of interesting restaurants. We ate at this place, named “Pasta?” with a question mark. For those of you still wondering, yes, there is pasta.
I’m on Castro Street. It’s been rainy since we got here, but not too cold.
Another restaurant we tried is La Fiesta. We had to take a picture of the logo. After we ate and were walking out to our car we saw another couple taking a picture of the sign too. It’s irresistible.
-Jason