San Jose

San Jose is an inland city, and the beach means driving over the Santa Cruz Mountains. It takes about 45 minutes on a good day and much longer on summer weekends. Santa Cruz, Capitola and the coves of the northern Monterey Bay are pleasant, sunny and sheltered from the worst of the Pacific swell, with a proper beach-town feel.

The water is the catch. Even in late summer it rarely gets above about 16°C, so most people paddle, surf in wetsuits or sit on the sand rather than swim. It makes a good day out, but nobody bases a beach vacation here.

San Jose eats well if you know where to drive. It has one of the largest Vietnamese communities in the United States, and the strip malls of the east side and Little Saigon serve excellent pho, banh mi and broken-rice plates. There are also serious taquerias, Indian and Korean restaurants along the corridors towards Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, and a small historic Japantown with long-running family places.

What it lacks is a centre. The best cooking is scattered through suburban plazas rather than walkable streets. Downtown and the outdoor mall district on the west side offer polished but fairly generic dining. Wineries in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and the upmarket restaurants in Los Gatos and Saratoga, add a more leisurely layer.

San Jose is a young-looking city with a handful of real curiosities. The Winchester Mystery House is a sprawling Victorian mansion of staircases that lead nowhere. The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum holds a surprising collection of antiquities in a temple-style building set in a park. Mission Santa Clara, on the university campus nearby, recalls the Spanish colonial founding. Downtown has the San Jose Museum of Art and a hands-on technology museum.

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View tells Silicon Valley's own story well. Beyond that the historic core is thin and the city is mostly postwar sprawl. A couple of days covers it.

Going out in San Jose happens on a few downtown blocks. San Pedro Square, on the north-west side of the centre, has pubs, beer halls and a covered food-and-drink market. It is the natural stop before and after games and concerts at the arena, which sits a short walk west near Diridon Station. To the south, the SoFA district along South First Street has cocktail bars, late-opening dive bars and a few dance clubs that fill up on weekends. The outdoor shopping district on the west side adds smarter wine and cocktail bars.

It is a pleasant, low-key scene, busy on Friday and Saturday and quiet the rest of the week, and it thins out well before the small hours. People who want a big night usually take the train or drive up to San Francisco.

The valley is ringed by hills, and that is San Jose's outdoor strength. To the west, the Santa Cruz Mountains hold old-growth redwood groves at Henry Cowell and Big Basin, with ridge trails at Castle Rock and quiet backroads loved by road cyclists. On the city's own edges, Alum Rock Park and the oak-dotted foothill preserves offer easy hikes. Mount Hamilton rises to the Lick Observatory to the east.

Within about an hour and a half you reach the Monterey Bay, with kayaking among sea otters, whale watching and the cypress headlands of Point Lobos. Pinnacles National Park is in range too. The foothills turn green in winter and spring and gold through the dry summer. Almost everything needs a car.

San Jose's location is one of its best arguments. San Francisco is about an hour away by Caltrain or car, close enough for a full day among its neighbourhoods and waterfront. Stanford's campus and Palo Alto are much closer, and Berkeley and Oakland sit across the bay.

South and west, Santa Cruz has its old boardwalk and surf town, and Monterey and Carmel are about an hour and a quarter away, with Cannery Row, the historic adobes and the mission. The wineries of the Santa Cruz Mountains and Livermore are near, and Napa and Sonoma can be reached in about two hours if the traffic is kind. Small towns such as Los Gatos, Saratoga and Half Moon Bay make easy half days.

San Jose suits families who are happy to drive. California's Great America theme park is in neighbouring Santa Clara. Happy Hollow Park and Zoo is a gentle, small-scale zoo and play park for younger children, and downtown has both a children's discovery museum and a hands-on technology museum with an IMAX dome. The mild, dry climate keeps outdoor days easy for most of the year.

Further afield, the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk has classic seaside rides, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium is among the finest in the country. Suburban hotels with pools and parking make logistics simple, although almost every outing means time in the car and some of it in traffic.

San Jose is a city of freeways and wide boulevards. Downtown is compact and flat enough to walk between the museums, the arena and the bar streets, and a light-rail network runs north and south. Caltrain gives a reliable link up the Peninsula to Palo Alto and San Francisco.

Beyond those lines, buses are slow and infrequent and distances are long. The mansion, the malls, the foothill parks and the coast are all scattered across the valley. Most visitors hire a car or use ride-hailing, and they should plan around rush-hour traffic on the freeways.

Shopping in San Jose is mostly about malls, and they are good ones. On the west side, a very large regional mall and the adjoining open-air street of boutiques and terraces cover most international and luxury brands in one place, with easy parking.

Independent shopping is thinner. Japantown has a few long-standing shops, the main streets of Los Gatos and Willow Glen have pleasant boutiques, and the Asian supermarkets and plazas are interesting to browse. There is no historic shopping street or craft tradition to seek out.

San Jose sits in one of the most expensive regions in the United States, and visitors feel it. Hotels are priced for business travel, so they are at their dearest midweek and can be noticeably cheaper at weekends. Sit-down restaurants, drinks and parking are all high, and car hire and fuel add to the bill because getting around without a car is hard.

The saving graces are the casual Vietnamese, Mexican and Asian eateries in suburban plazas, which remain fair value, and plenty of free parks and trails.

San Jose has a respectable, small-scale arts calendar. Opera San José performs in the restored California Theatre, a 1920s movie palace downtown. The city's symphony and touring Broadway shows share the Center for the Performing Arts. The arena and larger venues draw big touring concerts, and the long-established summer jazz festival fills downtown streets with stages.

On an ordinary weeknight the choice is limited. Visitors who want a deep programme of theatre, opera or club music usually head to San Francisco.

San Jose is not a place people come to unwind. Wellness means hotel spas, day spas in the wealthier suburbs and a few Korean-style bathhouses with saunas and soaking pools in the surrounding valley towns.

For a slower pace, the leafy hillside towns of Los Gatos and Saratoga offer quiet streets, and the Japanese gardens at Hakone and in the Japanese Friendship Garden at Kelley Park are calm places for an hour. The wider city is busy, sprawling and built around the working week.