--- title: Tech Tourists Are Making Pilgrimages to Silicon Valley description: Google, Facebook and Apple corporate headquarters are turning into pilgrimage sites as tourists make detours to visit. authors: - name: Ian Salisbury role: Senior Editor url: https://money.com/author/ian-salisbury-2/ bio: Ian Salisbury was a senior editor at Money, focusing on investing, banks and mortgage. at_money_since: 2013 articles: 91 covers: - Lifestyle - Economy and Politics - Housing - Investing - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes former_staff: true published: '2016-06-23T16:03:32.000Z' modified: '2016-06-23T16:03:32.000Z' section: Lifestyle tags: - Apple - church of the holy sepulchre - facebook - Google - pubdesk - Silicon Valley - Tourism word_count: 311 canonical: https://money.com/tech-tourism-silicon-valley/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Visitors to the sculpture park outside the Google Visitor](https://img.money.com/2016/06/gettyimages-538820624.jpg) *Visitors to the sculpture park outside the Google Visitor Center.* Talk about worshiping the Almighty Dollar. From Mecca to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, religious-minded travelers have always sought out places where the spiritual touches the terrestrial. Now a new breed of pilgrims is flocking to a different kind of shrine: The Silicon Valley office park. San Francisco tourists are no longer content to ride the cable cars or take the ferry out to Alcatraz, [according to new report by the *San Jose Mercury News*](http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_30046793/google-facebook-and-apple-draw-hordes-tech-tourists). Increasingly, they are heading into Silicon Valley to the headquarters of tech giants including, Apple, Google, Facebook and others. While the numbers aren't clear, the paper suggested there were "hundreds a day" stopping to gawk and, of course, snap selfies in front of the 'thumb's up' sign that adorns Facebook's corporate headquarters in Menlo Park and Google's in Mountain View. A favorite of Google visitors: An Android-themed sculpture garden boasting larger-than-life cupcake, gingerbread man and chocolate-frosted doughnut. "We use Google every day, every hour, so we wanted to visit it," one Brazilian tourist told the *Mercury News*. "It's an important place." While many venture on their own, you can also hire a guide. One company, [San Jose Silicon Valley Tours](http://sjsvtours.com/), offers to help you "See the Place That Changed the World," for $2,500 per group, or $100 per person, for a six-hour excursion. Of course, the impulse to witness and commune with the physical incarnation of an abstract, but ever-present force in our lives is one that has been animating travelers for thousands of years. When it's not hard to argue that [commerce has displaced religion](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/books/review/the-money-cult-by-chris-lehmann.html?_r=0) as society's animating principal, the comparison between holy and profane seekers isn't hard to make. "What you're seeing are people on a pilgrimage," said Stanford communications professor Fred Turner, told the *Mercury News*. 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