offwegooo.com
Travel guide
San Jose
6 days · 8 things to do
Best time to go: April to June and September to October
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Welcome
San Jose, in a few days
The largest city in Northern California, with a million inhabitants, is the capital of a 70 km valley that gave birth to the microprocessor, Apple, Google and Nvidia, between vanished orchards and glass campuses. People come to see the HP garage, the computers of yesteryear at the museum in Mountain View and the Stanford campus, before crossing the mountains to the redwoods and beaches of Santa Cruz.
- Day by day
- D1 Day 1 2 things
- D2 Day 2 2 things
- D3 Day 3 1 thing
- D4 Day 4 1 thing
- D5 Day 5 1 thing
- D6 Day 6 1 thing
- Worth sorting before you go
- Words that help
- The practical page
- Packing checklist
The trip
Day by day
Map of the sights (numbers follow the suggested order). It prints with the base map.
D1
Day 1
2 things to do · at your own pace
- Morning · Winchester Mystery House · about 1 h 30A 160-room Victorian mansion that Sarah Winchester, widow of the rifle heir, kept enlarging from 1886 to 1922, full of stairs leading to the ceiling and doors opening onto nothing.
- Afternoon · Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum · about 2 hAn unexpected collection of Egyptian antiquities assembled by an esoteric order in a building inspired by the Temple of Amun at Karnak, with mummies, sarcophagi and a replica Old Kingdom tomb.
🛏️ Where to sleep · Hotel De Anza ↗ · All places to stay by budget →€190 a night
D2
Day 2
2 things to do · at your own pace
- Morning · The Tech Interactive · 3 to 4 hDowntown San Jose's hands-on science and technology museum, where you design a robot, code a game or study cells in a biology lab, before ending up under the IMAX dome.
- Late afternoon · Apple Park Visitor Center free · about 1 hA glass and timber pavilion opposite Apple's ring-shaped headquarters in Cupertino, with an augmented reality model of the campus, a rooftop terrace, a café and an Apple Store.
🛏️ Where to sleep · Hotel De Anza ↗€190 a night
D3
Day 3
1 thing to do · at your own pace
- Morning · Computer History Museum · 3 to 4 hOne of the world's largest museums of computing, in Mountain View, tracing 2,000 years of calculation from the abacus to the Cray-1, an Apple I and Google's first home-made servers.
🛏️ Where to sleep · Hotel De Anza ↗€190 a night
D4
Day 4
1 thing to do · at your own pace
- Morning · Stanford University free · half a dayThe university founded in 1885 whose alumni created HP, Google and Nvidia, with its sandstone Main Quad, the mosaic-covered Memorial Church and a free Rodin collection at the Cantor Arts Center.
🛏️ Where to sleep · Hotel De Anza ↗€190 a night
D5
Day 5
1 thing to do · at your own pace
- Morning · Big Basin Redwoods State Park · half a dayCalifornia's oldest state park, created in 1902 to save the coast redwoods, where most of the giants survived the 2020 fire and trails pass trees more than 1,000 years old.
🛏️ Where to sleep · Hotel De Anza ↗€190 a night
D6
Day 6
1 thing to do · at your own pace
- Morning · Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk free · half a dayCalifornia's oldest amusement park still operating, opened in 1907, with the 1924 Giant Dipper wooden roller coaster and the 1911 Looff carousel, next to the beach and the sea lions' wharf.
Before you go
Worth sorting before you go
📶 eSIM data
Online the moment you land, no roaming bill.
Get one · Holafly
Online the moment you land, no roaming bill.
Get one · Holafly
🛡️ Travel insurance
Health, luggage, cancellation.
Cover it · Ekta
Health, luggage, cancellation.
Cover it · Ekta
💳 Fee-free card
Pay at the real rate, with no exchange markup.
Open one · Revolut
Pay at the real rate, with no exchange markup.
Open one · Revolut
🚐 Airport transfer
A private car at a fixed price from the moment you land.
Book it · GetTransfer
A private car at a fixed price from the moment you land.
Book it · GetTransfer
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Good to know
Flavours & local habits
🍽️ Worth tasting
- Burgers and barbecue: brisket and ribs cooked low and slow, done differently in every state.
- Clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl: the classic lunch on the San Francisco waterfront.
- Mexican food: tacos from a truck in Los Angeles, a Mission burrito in San Francisco.
- Pancakes and weekend brunch: a national habit, generous to the point of excess.
- Craft beer, and California wine from Napa and Sonoma.
⚠️ Best avoided
- Tipping is not optional: add 15 to 20% in restaurants and bars.
- Prices on menus and in shops exclude sales tax, which is added at the till.
- Do not plan more than four or five hours of driving a day: the distances are larger than they look on the map.
- Never travel without health insurance. A night in hospital can cost thousands of dollars.
- In summer, do not hike down into the Grand Canyon in the heat of the day: the climb back out is where people get into trouble.
Getting by
Words that help
🗣️ English is the main language here, so there is nothing to learn by heart.
The essentials
The practical page
CurrencyUS dollar (USD, $)
BudgetAbout €190 a day, mid-range
Best seasonApril to June and September to October
PlugA/B · 120V
Tap waterSafe to drink
Tipping15 to 20%, expected
Emergency911
EntryUK, Australian and most EU passports need an ESTA, applied for online before departure, for stays of up to 90 days; a few EU countries sit outside the Visa Waiver Program and need a full visa. Canadians need neither, only a passport. Anyone who has been to Cuba since January 2021 cannot use an ESTA and must apply for a visa.
HealthNo vaccination required. Keep tetanus, diphtheria and polio up to date; hepatitis A is worth considering if you eat well off the tourist trail. In the desert parks, the heat is the real risk.
Scan to open this guide online, always up to date.
https://offwegooo.com/en/guides/san-jose
Don't forget
Packing checklist
Have a good trip.
Guide made on offwegooo.com · Photos: Pexels and Wikimedia Commons (XAtsukex, CC BY 3.0) · Details are indicative, check before you leave.