16 Silicon Valley landmarks you must visit on your next trip

You can't visit Facebook's campus unless you have a friend on the inside, but you'll like your visit anyway. Tourists visit the Menlo Park campus to pose in front of its like sign all year long. Unfortunately, the Facebook swag shop is inside its offices so you can't pick up anything else related to the social network.

Address: 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park, CA 94025

Facebook took over Sun Microsystem's old campus, but left a little bit of legacy behind. It's a good reminder of the cycle of tech companies in Silicon Valley. And if you were a huge fan of Sun, you can always pose with that sign too.

The only tech company with a collection of candy outside its walls, a stop on Google's campus means you can take a photo with any of its Android collection figurines. (Hint: the newest one is a marshmallow)

You can even walk over its "Google Gate Bridge," which connects buildings on campus, although you can't sneak in for a free lunch inside the Googleplex unless an employee gives you a tour.

Address: 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View, CA 94043

Silicon Valley's power lunch place, Buck's of Woodside is only a quick drive away from Sand Hill Road. As a result, the quirky restaurant has seen the birth of many a tech company. The first demo of PayPal was in Buck's, as was the incorporation of Hotmail. The owner of the restaurant even claims that early Tesla prototypes pulled up outside and were offering equity on the doorsteps of his restaurant.

Address: 3062 Woodside Road, Woodside, CA 94062

Website: Buck's of Woodside

The birthplace of Silicon Valley, or at least according to its historical sign out front, the HP Garage was home to the early days of the Hewlett-Packard company. Dave Packard and his wife, Lucille, moved into the first floor apartment in 1938, and Bill Hewlett lived in the shed in the back. After Hewlett got married, the garage was turned into HP's business office.

It was christened the "Birthplace of Silicon Valley" in 2007 when it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The garage and house are closed to public tours, but visitors can take pictures from the side walk.

Address: 367 Addison Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94301

Website: HP Garage Museum

Many a Silicon Valley tech company has started in a garage and that includes Apple.

Steve Jobs was living with his parents in his childhood home when he started working on the Apple computer. Jobs and his co-founder, Steve Wozniak, finalized the first 50 computers in the garage, although Woz now claims the garage is a "bit of a myth."

Down the street is also the now-defunct The Byte Shop (1063 West El Camino Real). The computer store bought the first 50 Apple-1 computers produced by Jobs and Wozniak in the garage for $500 each.

Address: 2066 Crist Dr, Los Altos, CA 94024

Located in Los Gatos, Chef Chu's has been a tasty stop for tech executives for years. Steve Jobs ate there before he was the Steve Jobs. Former Intel CEO Craig Barrett reportedly used to have his own booth at the Chinese restaurant. Barrett kept a piece of fortune-cookie wisdom from the restaurant as well and would refer to its message — "The world will always accept talent with open arms" — during meetings.

Chef Chu's is located down the street from Box's headquarters, so you can spot cloud computing execs eating there regularly.

Address: 1067 N San Antonio Rd, Los Altos, CA 94022

Website: http://chefchu.com

The Google co-founders chose a great landlord in 1988. Now YouTube-head Susan Wojcicki rented her garage to Larry Page and Sergey Brin to help her cover the mortgage payments.

The pair dubbed the garage, complete with blue carpeting, the worldwide headquarters of Google. The company stayed in the garage until it reached seven employees and found a place of its own.

Google has since bought back the garage, although it doesn't use it for much.

Address: 232 Santa Margarita Ave, Menlo Park, CA 94025

There's few places left where you can still play Pong and see its original terminal. The Computer History Museum is one of them.

The museum, located in the middle of Silicon Valley, traces the history of the computer, from when it used to take up most of a room to the small hand-held phones we have today.

Address: 1401 N Shoreline Blvd, Mountain View, CA 94043

Website: Computer History Museum

It may look like a bunch of office buildings, but Sand Hill Road is legendary for the venture capitalists that troll up and down it in their Teslas. Nearly every major tech company, including Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter, received funding from a Sand Hill Road company.

Restaurants in the vicinity including The Village Pub and Madera are a good place to play spot the venture capitalist. The Rosewood Hotel, located right off Sand Hill, even offers a Silicon Valley historical tour for its patrons.

Executive Chef Charlie Ayer won his position as Google's first executive chef after winning a cook-off for its 40 employees. He's since left the company to open Calafia Cafe in downtown Palo Alto.

His Google past hasn't left him though. It's reported that Sergey Brin loves to pop in and the employees of Nest love it so much that there's a special "Nest Nog" named after their patronage.

Address: Town & Country Village, 855 El Camino Real, Suite 130, Palo Alto, CA 94301

Website: Calafia

You can't get into Apple's campus, but you can visit its store. It's the only place where you can buy Apple-branded paraphernalia like T-shirts and notebooks. The store recently re-opened after a redesign so it has a whole new line of gear never before seen in Apple stores before. (That includes a pen designed by Jony Ive).

Address: 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014 (Note: the store is closed on Sundays)

Website: Apple store

Hangar One is one of the world's largest freestanding structures, covering 8 acres of ground.

Why did a building in Silicon Valley need to be so large? Hangar One needed to house the USS Macon, a blimp only 20 feet shorter than the Hindenburg. The USS Macon was struck down in 1935 off the California coast, but Moffett continued as a joint civil-military air field.

While the site is owned by NASA (which has its own museum adjacent) and leased to Google, a small museum continues to operate on site to commemorate its past.

Address: Moffett Field, Mountain View, CA 94043

Website: Moffett Historical Society Museum and NASA Ames Research Center

Sure, Stanford University may have sprouted some of the modern day tech giants, but its namesake also had a big role in earlier Valley days.

John Leland Stanford helped pay for the development of the Central Pacific Railroad and was given "The Last Spike" when the rail line finally met with the Union Pacific to complete the Transcontinental Railroad.

The spike is now on display at Stanford along with his family art collection. And once you finish looking at those, there's time to walk around and see the big names that adorn the campus buildings.

Address: 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305

Website: Cantor Arts Center

Right off the Stanford campus border, the Coupa Cafe has become a place for tech founders and investors to meet, test, and work on products. The cafe is not only a testing ground for a lot of small startups, but it also leads to a lot of startup deals.

Its popularity in the tech crowd means it can be harder to snag a table, but it's still fun to listen in to the future of Silicon Valley around you.

Address: 538 Ramona St, Palo Alto, CA 94301

Website: Coupa Café

Whether you believe in karma or not, 165 University Ave. has been labeled the "The Lucky Office" of Silicon Valley and for good reason.

It was the first office of Google and home to PayPal. Before early Google moved in, computer accessory maker Logitech was the first famous company to walk its halls.

The bottom floor now holds a T-Mobile Store and a tea shop, but there's still room for startups on the top.

Address: 165 University Ave. Palo Alto, CA, 94301

An earlier piece of technology, the Winchester rifle made a lot of money for the eponymous family.

Heir to the family fortune, Sarah Winchester built a house in San Jose — but she claims she was haunted by the ghosts of everyone who died at the hands of her family-made rifles.

Being moved to build by spirits, she began construction on the Winchester Mystery House in 1884 and it continued until her death in 1922. During that time, it's estimated between 500 and 600 rooms were built, but only 160 remain. The house is full of weird architectural elements, like the "Switchback Staircase" which has seven flights of stairs that are only two inches tall each.

Address: 525 S Winchester Blvd San Jose, CA 9512

Website: Winchester Mystery House