Albert's Day at Google

Although Flat Al has already been to Google, he hasn't had a tour of the campus until now. When Albert got off the Google shuttle, the first thing he saw was rows and rows of bikes.


Because Google has a ton of buildings spread out over the area, they decided to put bikes at each entrance so that employees can just bike on over to other buildings for their meetings...or maybe just for lunch... Google also has "conference bikes" (like tandem bikes but it has 7 seats circularly located around one hub that someone can steer). Best part: It has Wi-fi so you actually can have a conference on it if you want to.

Anyway, I digress. Einstein then ran over to the first building to take a picture with the huge Google sign:


And then looked at the courtyard where employees like to take their lunch:


(Google has 16 cafes in the area - each one has a theme: there's a tapas place, a sushi place, an pure ingredient place (where all ingredients are made on site), a carbon neutral place, a European food place, a smoothie place, etc...all super delicious gourmet food, all free :) You can get all three meals at Google. Erika normally starts the morning with yummy pancakes, french toast brioche with blueberry mascarpone filling, omeletes, or crepes. It's a good thing that Albert's flat, cuz Erika was definitely in danger of gaining the Google 15... :( Even "worse" was the "100-foot rule" where no-one ever has to walk more than 100 feet to get food. But at least the microkitchens are stocked with super healthy food... :)

Erika then lost Albert for a few seconds when he decided to play hide-and-seek in the vegetable garden.

(Can you find him?)

On his explorations, Albert encountered some peculiar flamingoes.


These flamingos have been known to move around over night. Or put on ponchos and sombreros for Cinco de Mayo. They also like to get into formation and attack the dinosaur. What dinosaur, you say? Why, Stan the T-Rex of course!


Stan, put Albert and that flamingo down! Don't worry, he's just playing... Although over the course of a week, I have seen a flamingo start in Stan's jaw and then progress down it's rib cage and into it's stomach...On second thought, maybe Albert should just stay away from Stan...

Albert then took a tour of the laundry rooms, Google gyms, the 2 infinite pools (complete with lifeguard!). The infinite pools are small 10ft x 5ft pools that create a current so that you can swim upstream.

Finally, what day is complete without a trip to the masseuse followed by a game on the beach volleyball courts:

("Look! I'm taller than all these people," says Albert.)

BTW, that's my co-workers playing there. They are super good!