Leaving Mountain View I headed down to San Jose and visited the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum.
Driving around is actually really easy once you know where you are going. Typically all trips involve a four step process: get onto freeway, drive, get off freeway, profit! However, I would suggest using GPS navigation instead of my antiquated post-it note system.
This was the best Egyptian museum I’ve ever been too1. The outside grounds have a really cool Egyptian theme going on with plenty of photo opportunities. Inside there are several floors to explore including a small mock tomb in the basement. While quite a few of the artifacts are replicas, I couldn’t tell the difference (although having replica on the description gives it away).
One of the top floors outlines the story of the Pharoah Akhenaten who single handedly attempted to manipulate Egyptian religion into only worshiping one god (Aten). Akhenaten ended up founding a new capital city and attempting to eliminate worshiping of all other gods. Banning of idols, defacement of temples, etc. Eventually Akhenaten was succeeded by Tutankhaten (later known as Tutankhamun) who ended up abandoning the city as Aten fell out of favour.
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1. also it has been the only Egyptian museum I’ve been too