My one-month stay at Maria's was just great - I can only highly recommend staying at her place. She did everything to make my stay there as convenient as possible. Picked me up at the Caltrain-Station, provided me with a bike including helmet and a bike map, gave me directions and offered to drive me to the supermarket to buy the first groceries, gave me tipps concerning what to do where etc. Just very supportive and welcoming - the same is true for Moe and Buddy, the house dog and cat! At one point the tire of the bike needed to be fixed, and she took care of it immediately and offered me to take her bike to drive to Stanford in the meantime. And at the end of my stay, she offered to give me a lift to the airport (SFO), which again was great considering all the luggage I had accumulated over the time. Thanks again for that!
The room is great, private side entrance (which I never used), very comfy big bed, private bathroom, and loooots of storage space in the closet. You can use the kitchen which obviously has everything one would need, I could use coffee offered by Maria, the garden is a fine little retreat with lots of sun in the (early) afternoon - and sun they obviously have plenty of in California. Stanford is a 15-20min bike ride away, Palo Alto downtown about 10min, Caltrain California Ave you'll reach after 5min on the bike, Google is also just 15mins away - so everything is really in close distance. And for those who want to drive to the city, the Caltrain baby bullets take you there in just about 40mins. And there are lots of opportunities to go (grocercy) shopping in the vicinity - and the great Philz Coffee place just a couple of blocks away.
So for everyone who wants to go to the Silicon Valley either for vacation, business, or academia, I can only warmly recommend Maria's place for the value of money AND - most importantly - for the great host!