Overview

Silicon Valley innovations and inventions have changed the course of our human history andimpact our daily lives in every way.The innovations, once considered science fiction, have become a reality. Join us now and discover these iconic tech giants who changed the world. Visit Silicon Valley’s must-see attractions with the top sights and tour famous tech companies like Google, Apple, Intel, Stanford University, Oracle, Facebook, Palo Alto, San Jos.

Description

Why Silicon Valley is a must-see tech tourist destination? Silicon Valley innovations and inventions have changed the course of our human history, the connection between technology and culture impact our daily lives in every way. These emerging technologies are forever changing the way in which we obtain daily information, banking, computing, and governs the daily interaction and communications between people all over the world. We are truly a privileged generation living in a fascinating changing and pivotal time in our human history. Visiting Silicon Valley makes visitors and travelers understand better how these tech giants work, and why they are all concentrated in this ‘new promised land’ called Silicon Valley.

Learn how the innovations, once considered science fiction, have become a reality and entered the consumers mainstream, whether it is Apple’s latest iPhone, Google search engines and products, social media networks like Facebook, Intel semiconductors, eBay, Oracle, HP, Nasa, PayPal or even Tesla’s electric cars – they all impact our daily lives in many ways. The remarkable impact of Silicon Valley technology will only continue to grow and affect our lives even more as time goes by.

Silicon Valley business ecosystem is a must-see for everyone. It has even become a frequent stop for heads of State, Kings, Queens and Presidents when visiting California. They are all intrigued by this small part of the world called ‘Silicon Valley’, with its technological growth and how small ideas became giant companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter or Apple. Visiting Silicon Valley will make you understand why startup companies flourish so rapidly in this part of the world.
Join us and book our Silicon Valley personalized tour and get all the answers you need. It is extremely important to find the right and accredit local tour operator and expert tour guides, so you experience and enjoy an in-depth guided tour, not just drive-by and missing out the essence of Silicon Valley tech tourism. This is where our passionate and knowledgeable local tour guides come in so handy. They will offer you many options and will personalize your Silicon Valley tour itinerary on the go, based on your preference. You can book your private tour on our secure website, and your tour guide will customize your tour accordingly. You don’t have to worry about planning the trip, negotiating traffic and how to navigate through this massive geographical region, hidden sites, and busy highways. We take care of the planning and the driving.
The question we get a lot from customers and travelers are whether they can go inside tech giant’s facilities or not. Yes, it’s true that the most notable Silicon Valley tech giants offer no tours of their campuses or access to the public inside their facilities. However, some allow limited public access inside their premises, whilst others like Google, Oracle, Apple and Facebook, don’t. They are secretive and they have the right to be protective in this new era of cyber-attacks and security issues.

The only way a member of the public can tour the inside of campus buildings is if they are escorted by an employee. So, if you happen to have a friend or relative who works there, ask them to get an invitation, and we will get you there.

What all visitor should know is that even if you are invited by a famous Silicon Valley firm like Google, they never allow anyone to go upstairs to visit their offices. All visitors remain limited to the lobby area downstairs or in the food court area, which offers no benefits, only a lot of hassle and nothing much to see.

Our tour guides’ tip of the day. Our tour guides recommend that you take full advantage of your one-time trip to Silicon Valley and rather focus on what you can see and get insider access to places that make your holiday memorable. This can include the famous Computer History Museum, Stanford Walking tour inside the campus, visit President Hoover Tower and museum, visit Stanford stores ad library, take a guided tour inside the world famous Intel Museum and learn about how ‘silicon’ is used in manufacturing chips and semiconductors, visit the Nasa visitor center and you may also gain access to Moffett Fields’ Nasa visitor’s center US Military Historical Society and Museum.

Visit Googleplex (Google Headquarter) and walk in the campus , see YouTube and Google map buildings and go inside Google merchandise store and picture yourself with Google Android lawn giant statues, Visit Yahoo or Oracle merchandize stores from inside as well, or visit San Jose’s famous sites, including the Museum of Innovation if you have kids or teenagers, or the Children Discovery Museum for kids of age 10 years or younger, visit Santana Row in San Jose and its premium outlet boutiques, Tesla Store, or take and trip to the famous Winchester Mystery House.

You may also go inside Apple’s main merchandize store located in Apple Headquarter in Cupertino.

There are many places you can visit and see from inside – in fact this can take days to see them all because Silicon Valley is extensive and hard to cover all in one-day trip. We highly recommend that you select the places you would like to see and let your tour guide know more about your preference. Regardless of your choice, you can still ask your private tour guide to personalize your trip itinerary on the day of the tour.

You may also choose one of the following options on our website, ‘itineraries and choices’, to give us an idea about your priorities and preference regarding the sites you wish to visit or see in Silicon Valley. This can be done by simply adding the number of the itinerary you like in the ‘box’ entitled ‘special request’ and you will find our shopping cart as you check out your purchase.

Itinerary

What to expect from this Silicon Valley private tour?

We recommend adding the number of the itinerary you like in the ‘box’ entitled ‘special request’ and you will find our shopping cart as you check out your purchase.

8-hour private tour: From Silicon Valley door-to-door, when starting and ending the trip in San Francisco, or a 6-hour private tour: when starting, and ending in south San Francisco or Silicon Valley.If you are staying on the south bay or in Silicon Valley area, you save the traveling time from San Francisco to Silicon Valley and vice versa, as this driving time usually takes about 90 minutes each way. Therefore, when the tour starts and ends in Silicon Valley, it last 6 hours instead of 8 hours, because we are based in San Francisco not in Silicon Valley. You still get to see more sites because we save on the driving time and traffic congestion before we go to your pick-up location.

Please keep in mind once again that most Silicon Valley tech companies are not open to the public. Having said that, you still have an extremely rewarding touring experience in Silicon Valley, because there are more places you can visit from inside and outside than the few sites closed to the public.

For example, if you are interested Silicon Valley technology and innovation, we tailor and personalize your trip based on your choice of sites, attractions and places you wish to see. We recommend number 1 or 2 from the itinerary below for technophiles who look for an in-depth geek tour or for families and visitors, with or without kids.

If you are visiting Silicon Valley for leisure and wish to squeeze in as many places as possible in a one-day trip to Silicon Valley without stopping for too long at each site or attraction, we recommend itinerary number 3. The tour is quite educational, fun and offers full flexibility and freedom to customize it on the go at any time. To gain a better idea of Silicon Valley history and attractions, we recommend choosing one of the following itineraries:
Itinerary 1: This trip of Silicon Valley combines a walking guided tour of Stanford University in Palo Alto, with a semi-private guided tour of Intel Museum, and a public or a self-guided tour of the Computer History Museum. This option is recommended for techy visitors and families with kids who want to visit Stanford University and visit Silicon Valley’s top museums. In addition to these sites, your private guide will offer you options and side trips to view high-tech corporations and sights from a distance, such as HP Garage in Palo Alto, or Steve Job’s former home or Gage. You will see many sites of interest along the way like downtown Palo Alto or Apple Headquarters and their main store (time permitting), or travel to Mountain View and visit Googleplex, and or visit the NASA visitor center. Please note that many sites are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays including the computer history museum and Intel, so we recommend that you check our section below ‘useful information and tips’. Don’t worry about the trip itinerary, sit back in our luxury vehicle, tell your tour leader what you would like to see and leave the driving to us.

Itinerary 2: This tour option includes a full-day sightseeing trip to Silicon Valley to visit the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Intel Museum in Sant Clara, Santana Row in San Jose, where you can dine in one of the most celebrated and trending restaurants, take a stroll and check out the Santa Row elegant outlet boutique stores, visit Tesla’s famous electric car store, or even visit the Winchester Mystery House (a haunted mansion that featured on TV). Your private tour will offer you more stops on the way to see iconic tech giants and sites like Facebook, Oracle, Apple Headquarters gift shop, Googleplex, NASA, downtown Palo Alto, and HP Garage (the birthplace of Silicon Valley). This tour option is for visitors who are not interested in visiting Stanford University or taking the walking tour because Stanford takes a lot of time on your tour, in addition to the 90-hour driving time each way from San Francisco, to Silicon Valley and vice versa, due to traffic and distance.

Itinerary 3: This day trip is an express tour for visitors who want to see as much as possible in one excursion without stopping for too long in each place. If you wish to stop at Stanford and take the walking tour, this is not the right tour option for you. However, if you want to explore Silicon Valley and spend a short amount of time in each place, so that you can fit in as many attractions as possible in your day tour, this is the right trip option for you.
Book this tour option and explore many sights and high-tech corporations of your choice Silicon Valley like Oracle, Googleplex, Intel, Aviation Museum, Facebook, Apple Headquarters Company store and gift shop, downtown Palo Alto, Stanford University, PayPal, Yahoo!, Amazon Lab 126, Tesla Motors store, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field Museum, the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, and/or HP Garage in Palo Alto. This express tour is recommended for first-time visitors to Silicon Valley who have no special interests in museums or universities. For families with kids; you may consider the Children’s Discovery Museum, the Tech Museum of Innovation, or California’s Great America amusement park for more fun.

The sights and attractions stated above can take 2 day trips to see them all, so we recommend that you select the places you like the most and let your tour guide know what sights you are interested in. We will customize your tour accordingly. There is no need to worry about the itinerary, because your tour guide will take care of the rest. He/she will keep you informed about your special interests, thereby tailoring this trip to meet your interests and tour needs.

Silicon Valley major tech giants and what expect to see when visiting these museums, tech companies, universities or tourist attractions

Google

What to expect when visiting Google?
The only way a member of the public can tour inside a tech giant, like Google’s, facilities is to be escorted by an employee. But visitors remain limited to the lobby area downstairs, which offers no benefits at all to go through the hassle and end up seeing nothing interesting anyway. Here’s what you can see and do when visiting Google.
Visit and walk in the area called Googleplex. This is the corporate headquarter complex of Google in Mountain View. The company operates dozens of buildings in the area and keeps expanding and taking over other giant tech companies like LinkedIn, who sold its buildings to Google in 2016.

With the rise of the revolutionary and mesmerizing architectural popularity of Apple’s ‘spaceship campus 2’ in Cupertino, Google has already revealed its future plans for the Google Headquarter Mountain View Campus. We are most likely going to a witness a ‘Google empire – a city within the city in the near future’. Ride the multicolored Google bikes around the campus like Google employees do, photograph YouTube and Google Map facilities from outside but you can step out of the vehicle and have your guide take a photograph of you standing by YouTube sign or Google street cars.

Let your private driver take you as well to the Google-branded souvenir and merchandize store where you can go inside the Google building to buy YouTube branded merchandise, Google t-shirts, gifts, and gear, bags, accessories, drinkware, electronics, and more. The Google Store is open Monday through Friday, 10:30 am to 6:30 pm, and you no longer need a Google ID badge to go inside Google Merchandise Store (adjacent to Android statues).

Go inside the giant Android statues and walk among super-sized representations of Google operating system’s mascots, including a hulking doughnut, immense cupcake and giant ice-cream sandwich, representing Android iterations and updates.

Drive around Google’s new facilities and past Garfield (Google Athletic Recreation Field) Park, Google-owned sports fields and tennis courts that are opened to the public for use on nights and weekends. See Google’s new self-driving cars, colorful chairs, bikes and umbrellas at the outdoor cafe. An optional side trip may take you inside a museum where you can see a temporary exhibit about Google technology and products.

Computer History Museum

California’s Mountain View Computer History is dedicated to the preservation and celebration of computing history. The Computer History Museum houses one of the largest collections of computing artifacts in the world, including computer hardware, ephemera, photographs, moving images, documents, software and some of the very first computers from the 1940s and 1950s. The museum traces the history of the computer and technology of Silicon Valley. It’s open Wednesday and Thursday from 10 am to 5 pm; Friday from 10 am to 9 pm and Saturday and Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm Admission packages range from $12-$40, but children 12 and younger are free.
Nasa Ames Research Visitor Center

NASA’s Ames Research Center is a key facility for many of NASA’s missions and projects. Come to the Ames’ Visitor Center and learn what the NASA is doing at this amazing NASA facility. The NASA Ames Visitor Center is a self-guided walkthrough and an average stay at the NASA Ames Visitor Center is about one hour or less. Please don’t expect a huge NASA center like in Florida, this is a small facility located in a parking lot at the main gate to NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field. It’s open to, and free for the public (Tuesday – Friday 10 am – 4 pm, Saturday – Sunday noon – 4 pm, and closed on Mondays and federal holidays).

The City of Palo Alto
The City of Palo Alto is the ‘Birthplace of the Silicon Valley’, and home to Stanford University. This is where Silicon Valley’s top entrepreneurs and notable people live. Located 35 miles south of San Francisco and 14 miles north of San Jose, Palo Alto is a dynamic and wealthy community.

The City of Palo Alto is more than 100 years old, and is named after a majestic 1000 (not 250) year old coastal redwood tree along San Francis Quito Creek, where early Spanish explorers settled. The blend of business and residential areas, anchored by a vibrant downtown, defines Palo Alto’s unique character. A charming mixture of old and new, Palo Alto’s tree-lined streets and historic buildings reflect its Californian heritage. At the same time, Palo Alto is recognized worldwide as a leader in cutting-edge technological development.

Stanford University Campus and President Hoover Tower
Stanford University is a private research university in Stanford, adjacent to Palo Alto. Join us and tour the world-renowned Stanford University. Stanford University campus is one of the largest and most beautiful in the country and deserves a visit. Stanford University also has the distinction of having the largest campus in the word and is the number one ranking University in North America. It’s one of the best universities in the World and worth a visit! It has such a beautiful campus, with Romanesque style buildings, art centers and bronze statues.

Stanford Campus Walking Tour. Stanford University is restricting access to vehicles larger than 7-seaters, require special permits and charge over $350 per hour for parking at their private campus. They do not make profit from tourism and they don’t have the staff to manage the thousands of visors who travel daily to visit their campus. We recommend choosing our small private tour to bypass these restrictions. Bear in mind that this is a self-walking tour when Stanford’s own walking tour is not available. Parking remain an issue and hard to find, so please exchange your telephone number with your driver and schedule a meeting location just in case you can’t reach him or her.

Walking tour groups are available seasonally and twice a day, based on availability. You will spend an hour or more walking with a Stanford student guide exploring the highlights of Stanford’s beautiful campus – a great introduction for first-time visitors and tourists. This tour covers central campus, including the Main Quad (historic and academic center of campus, including the school of Humanities & Sciences), walking by Hoover Tower and Library, visit the Memorial Church, see the Engineering Quad, and White Plaza (student activities area, including the Bookstore, Student Store, Old Union, and Tresidder Memorial Union). The Campus Walking Tour departs from the Stanford Visitor Center. This public group walking tour lasts 70 minutes and available at 11:00 am & 3:15pm but subject to change at any time as this a private campus.

Cantor Arts Center is one of the most impressive university museums in the country. The Cantor Arts Center is always bristling with visitors. The museum boasts a permanent art collection of more than 32,000 works and has several exhibits that are displayed throughout the year.

Hoover Tower: Stanford University’s Hoover Tower is a landmark to Stanford students, faculty and alumni, and local residents. At the top of the 285-foot tower, on the observation deck, visitors can take in sweeping views of the Stanford campus, the foothills and the Bay Area. A tour guide is available to point out landmarks and sights. Completed in 1941 to celebrate the university’s 50th anniversary, the structure is part of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. Cost is $4 for adults and $3 for seniors and children 12 and under. It is open daily from 10 am to 4 pm

San Jose Attractions and sights
San Jose is a large city surrounded by the rolling hills of Silicon Valley – a major technology hub in California’s Bay Area. The downtown historic district is known for its architectural landmarks, from the 1883 Italianate-style Oddfellows building, to Spanish Colonial Revival structures.
Best Things to Do in San Jose, whether you’ve come for business or leisure: You’ll find a lot to do and see in San Jose. Attractions and museums include the Museum of Art, the Children’s Discovery Museum Tech Museum of Innovation. For a whole day of family fun, head to California’s Great America amusement park in nearby Santa Clara or Santana Row.

Santana Row in San Jose
Santana Row is an outdoor shopping mall in San Jose, California. Discover Silicon Valley’s premiere destination for shopping, dining, living, and more. With over 70 shops, 20 restaurants, and 9 spas and salons. Then there is Tesla’s interactive experience for potential customers, allowing them to explore Tesla’s technology and learning about owning an electric vehicle.

Apple Header quarter in Cupertino and Apple Garage

The Apple Campus is the corporate headquarters of Apple Inc., located at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, in California. Its design resembles that of a university, with the buildings arranged around green spaces, similar to a suburban business park consisting of six buildings spread over four floors. Each building is numbered with one digit on the private U-shaped street. Infinite Loop – so named because of the programming concept of an infinite loop. The street, in conjunction with Mariani Avenue, actually does form a circuit (or cycle) that can circulate indefinitely. The main building has the address 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California.

The Company Store is the original Apple Employee store located at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino. It’s now open to the public, but this is different from all other Apple Retail Stores. It is the only place in the world that sells Apple logo t-shirts, caps and accessories beside Phones, iPads, apple watches and computers. The stop is open from 9 am to 5pm on the weekends and 9am to 7 pm during the weekdays.

Intel Museum and Santa Clara attractions
Go behind the scenes in the high-tech world of California’s famed Silicon Valley. See what it’s like inside an ultra-clean, highly automated silicon chip factory, and connect with technologies that give us new ways to work, learn, play, and communicate. The Intel Museum is 10,000 square feet of fun, interactive learning for children and adults. The Intel Museum is located at Intel’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California, has exhibits of Intel’s products and history as well as semiconductor technology in general. The museum is open weekdays and Saturdays except holidays (Monday–Friday, 9 am to 6 pm PT, Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm PT). Intel Museum Store is also open to the public.

Facebook in Menlo Park and Oracle in Redwoods Shores
Join us and tour Facebook’s Menlo Park Campus and we will stop at the famous Facebook ‘thumbs-up’ sign outside its Menlo Park headquarters. Nobody is allowed inside Facebook or Oracle, but it is still an exciting experience to stop by, walk through their campus and take pictures with their logos and signs.

With Facebook recently topping 10,000 employees, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who lives in Palo Alto, is building new modern and futuristic facilities with the largest open floor plan in the world, and local artists commissioned to decorate it. The 430,000 square-foot space fits 2,800 employees and Zuckerberg has a desk right in the middle. It will be worth your time and money to drive by and see it.

At Oracle, we will walk through the campus and even go inside the main building to visit the gift shop.

The Aviation Museum in San Carlos
The Hiller Aviation Museum is an aircraft history museum located at the San Carlos Airport in San Carlos, California. The museum was founded by Stanley Hiller in June 1998. It specializes in Northern California aircraft history and helicopter history.

Hours of Operation: 10am-5pm, 7 days a week. The museum can be closed to the public to accommodate scheduled events. Closed Easter Sunday, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day.
Admission Fees: $16.00 Adult, $11.00 Seniors (Age 65+), $11.00 Youths (5-17), FREE! Children (4 and under with paying adult)

Drive through Sunnyvale tech giants including Yahoo, and go inside their merchandise stores (limited access), see Amazon Motorola and HP facilities next to Moffett Fields and Martin.

Tour Prices

Included: Pickup and drop off in San Francisco, 8 hour guided tour from 9 am to 5 pm leaving from San Francisco and 6 hours if starting and ending in Silicon Valley area, and we also all applicable taxes. Nasa, Stanford University and Intel museum guided tours are included in this tour.

Not included: Meals, driver’s gratuity, overtime, wine tasting fees, Stanford University fees and optional activities or entrance fees to museums or firms. Note: overtime is recommended due to traffic and the massive areas to cover that Silicon Valley encompasses!

Term & Policy

Alcatraz Tours terms and conditions including cancellation and refund policy

• Terms, Refund and Cancellation Policy
• General terms
• Other terms and information
• Reservation and Cancellation Policy

Our Terms, Refund and Cancellation Policy are as follows:

1. 50% of the total amount will be refunded if the tour is canceled at least 7 business days prior to the scheduled tour or service.
2. 91% of the total amount will be refunded if the tour is canceled at least 15 days prior to the scheduled tour (or the date of the tour or service) 9% covers the required transaction fees; that’s 4.5 % per transaction (booking is one transaction and refunding is a second transaction)
3. 15% of the total amount will be refunded if the tour is canceled at least 6 business days prior to the scheduled tour (week-ends and holidays don’t count).
4. 0% of the total amount will be refunded if the tour is canceled 4 business days or less prior to the day of the scheduled tour or service. This includes no-shows. (Week-ends and holidays don’t count).

Cancellation & Refund Fees

There is a charge for each transaction when wanting a refund. This charge will vary from 4.5% to 7.9% per transaction depending on the type of credit card you used to make the transaction and the country where the credit card was issued. This charge covers the credit card transaction fees that your credit card company charged us when you made the reservation on our website and includes the required merchant processing fees associated with your credit card company. This policy applies on all refunds as well, regardless of the amount or the date of the refund.

Methods of Payment and Accepted Credit Cards: We accept all major credit cards including Master Card, Visa, Discover, American Express, wire transfers, Debit Cards, Euro Cards, “Cartes Bleues.” and PayPal. We may in exceptional circumstances accept payments in cash from clients who have no credit cards.

General Terms

Please note that tour guides are not allowed to guide inside Muir Woods National Monument and Alcatraz Island and Prison.

The pick-up at your hotel in San Francisco is included. However, to keep the cost down, the drop-off after your Alcatraz tour is not included.

Alcatraz tickets are extremely hard to get because they are often sold out weeks and months in advance. The sooner you book the better.

Approved online transactions do not guarantee your Alcatraz tour or tickets, as we should go through a process in order to book these tickets. After we receive your transaction, the tour can be approved or declined based on availability of Alcatraz tickets issued by Alcatraz. This is due to the increasing popularity of Alcatraz and number of visitors.

Other terms and information
Online Reservation and Transactions

What happens after we void or refund a transaction? Approved transactions: When transactions are processed on our website, and approved by your bank, it still takes about 7 to 10 business days before we even get the required funds transferred to our business merchant bank account. However, we still honor your tour(s) as scheduled if your transaction is approved, even if the tour is scheduled for the next day, as long as the tour is available. We are committed to provide high quality services and tours to our customers.

Voided and refunded transactions: When a transaction is voided, or refunded, the charge is removed from the authorized transaction inquiry and never batched or settled because the funds never leaves customers’ bank account. However, all such transactions will still show on customers’ bank statement as “pending” for up to 7 to 10 business days because the funds are temporarily frozen by your own bank without leaving your account. Please take this aspect into consideration before you follow up with us.
To release the funds, you will need to contact your bank and handle this directly with them as this has nothing do with us.

Common mistakes and misconception about voided transactions: Most customers do not realize or understand their own bank’s policy and guidelines regarding online purchases. The main issue is that the funds from the voided charge will be inaccessible to the client for a full 10 business days. For that reason, clients often think that the charge was still placed on their credit card, but in reality, it has never left their bank account and will be available only after 10 business days. In other words, voiding a credit card transaction will not remove the charge from customer’s bank account immediately, please be patient before you follow up with us or your bank in this regard. Banks usually take 7 to 10 business days to release these funds back to your account, and this is totally beyond our control and has nothing to do with us.

Declined transactions. Why your reservation was declined? When a reservation is declined by client’s own bank, this is often due to a mismatch between customer’s bank information (such as the name on the credit card, card number, expiration date, CVV, zip/postal code or billing address). If any one of these verification factors don’t match the information you provided on our website, comparing to the bank information when placed your order, your transaction is automatically declined by your own bank to protect your bank information from fraud. Sometimes, transactions are also declined due to insufficient funds as well. Your tour(s) will not be confirmed until your new transaction is approved by your own bank. We apologize for the inconvenience but your own bank did so to prevent fraud and protect your credit card information.

Tip: Most credit card companies including Amex now require from their clients to inform them in advance when making purchase online or out of town / state, otherwise they decline the transaction to prevent fraud. You may also get an email or text message alert asking you to approve or decline the transaction that has been declined before you resubmit it online, this is out of our hands and it’s indeed required by many credit cards companies for customers’ own good.
-All our tours including Alcatraz are subject to availability even if the online transaction is approved. We do reserve the right to void or refund your transaction when Alcatraz tickets are sold out. This is totally out of our hands as the only provider of Alcatraz tickets and tours are governed by the U.S. National Park Service.

-We do require at least 2 months in advance when booking our Alcatraz tour during the peaks season, holidays and week-ends, sometimes even more, specially from May to October. The peak season refers to the period of April to the end of October.

-We reserve the right to offer you alternative tours when Alcatraz tickets are sold out. If you decline our offer, we will fully refund your transaction – a process which takes about 10 business days before your funds are available to you. This is stated on our terms and conditions page, available in all languages, or you may use google translator.
By signing or checking this box “terms & conditions” on our website, you do hereby agree with all the above terms and policies and the tour voucher terms, which we will send to you via email after your tour confirmation.

Read more about our complete terms and policy by clicking here

Trip Reviews

A family fun day trip in Silicon Valley

Mark T. & Family
Philippines
We took a tour of San Francisco to Silicon Valley and took us through many areas filled with great institutions and high tech corporations like Oracle FB, Google among others, but our guided tours of the Stanford University campus, NASA and the Intel museum were much more interesting because they took us inside these giant tech companies .
There were many young technology professionals riding bikes on Google, Oracle, Apple and Facebook, this caught their attention and motivated our children to become more interested, which was the goal of our Silicon Valley discovery trip.

We also added a couple of extra hours to our private tour with Thomas, and took us to a hidden forest of old redwoods. We had read some negative reviews about Muir Woods Park and how many people are going but let me tell you that this redwood park
was amazing by the size of these massive and ancestral redwood trees in this forest near the Silicon Valley area, The ranger told us that some of these redwoods are over 2000 years old! Woohoo!
This trip is worth it, every penny we paid was with gusto, as it saved us time and driving on the busy roads. We recommend this company.

Silicon Valley is a paradise of Geeks and technology

The Smith
Indianapolis
This is a must see for any tech fanatic when visiting the San Francisco Bay area . We never thought Silicon Valley would become such an important tourist destination. After all, every device we have at home, whether our mobile phones, television, clock,
computer or software were designed in this world-famous Silicon Valley area. I was delighted to visit or just stroll through these famous technology sites like Apple HQ, Amazon, Yahoo, HP, Tesla, PayPal, Ebay, Google's campus, Hewlett & Packard's real garages and Steve Jobs's.
We did not have time to go to museums, But our panoramic tour allowed us to see much more than a regular trip as we covered the whole valley thanks to the experience and knowledge of our tour guide.
One tip: do not even think about driving on your own, the traffic is terrible there unless you know the way and all the shortcuts and exits as our guide.

A trip to Silicon Valley from Nigeria to California with 22 college students

Ernest O.
Lagos, Nigeria
This was the first trip our school organized from Lagos in Nigeria to Silicon Valley. As a tour leader and teacher in charge of 22 students, I was very nervous, did not know what to expect from this adventure, and how to organize all aspects and details of this trip to California.
I personally communicated several times with this tour operator in San Francisco, and spent several hours in their live chat for days and weeks, asking the same silly questions over and over again, however, they were extremely patient with me and all the information was very Helpful at all times, and that's how we decided to book our 5-day private tours by minibus to Silicon
Valley, San Francisco and Santa Cruz, The redwoods park and Mytery Spot.
We also had a chance to do the ziplines. On a half day adventure through a local redwoods park in Santa Cruz, it was fun and exciting even for me): -
This local tour company also helped us get appointments within Of some technology giant companies , some of them were not open to the public, including Cisco HQ in Milpitas, University of San Jose, UC Berkley, PayPal, Intel, Oracle, Computer Museum
Museum, The Levis Stadium, NASA, the Aviation Museum, and a private walking tour of the famous Stanford University led by a college student.

Our tour guides; Adam and John were not disappointed, they actually exceeded our expectations in many ways, and made our tours and trips very enjoyable and educational. Fortunately, we stayed at a hotel in Sunnyvale in Santa Clara, this saved us time, avoided traffic and even saved money, as we found that Francisco hotels are much more expensive. There is so much that I could say more about this experience and our private tours with this company, but I am pretty sure that this will not be our last tour with this company. Next year we will return with another group of students.