San Jose: A guide to short-term rentals

San Jose International Airport, located less than four miles from downtown San Jose, is a bustling transit hub with an ever-increasing selection of domestic and international flights, making it easy to fly in and out of the city from just about anywhere.

For in-state travel or flights that arrive in San Francisco, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (or BART) and Caltrain systems extend south from San Francisco and Oakland to San Jose, linking the Bay Area’s urban centers together.

Within San Jose, it’s easy to get around on the city’s light rail system, run by the VTA (Valley Transportation Authority). If you want to explore the city’s parks, gardens, and downtown, renting bikes is a great option. So close to the birthplace of ride-sharing apps, you can of course also call a taxi at your convenience. If you’re interested in exploring the suburbs and sprawling tech campuses that surround the city, or hiking in the nearby hills and redwood forests, you’ll want to consider renting a car. A car is also best for seeing the coastline on California’s legendary Route 1.

For the inside scoop on the most innovative place on Earth, head to the Tech Interactive in downtown San Jose. This science and technology center has exhibits on the kind of dynamic entrepreneurship that has made Silicon Valley famous. It also features hands-on activities, design challenges, and an IMAX Dome Theater with a four-story wraparound screen and 12,000 watts of digital surround sound.

A short ways away, you can see works by California and Pacific Rim artists at the San Jose Museum of Art, and you can stroll down Santana Row, a bustling pedestrian shopping stretch.

For lovers of odd old houses, the Winchester Mystery House is a must. It’s a 160-room Victorian mansion, built by an arms heiress, full of doors and stairways that go nowhere.

For a distant glimpse at the corporate campuses of Silicon Valley’s tech giants, head northwest to Cupertino, Mountain View, and Menlo Park.

San Jose attracts tech workers from around the world, and it’s one of the ethnically diverse cities in the U.S. That diversity is evident in the city’s cuisine, which features some of the best restaurants in the Bay Area. A major highlight of the city’s food scene is its Vietnamese offerings: San Jose has the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam, and there are numerous opportunities to indulge in pho, the brothy, herby noodle dish often served with meat.

San Jose boasts amazing opportunities to explore the outdoors. Take a walk or jog in leafy, 172-acre Kelley Park, with its koi-filled pond in the Japanese Friendship Garden. You can also stop by Happy Hollow, an amusement park and zoo. Hikers should head to Almaden Quicksilver County Park, with its scenic relics of mercury mining in the Santa Clara Valley in the mid-nineteenth century, or to the Sierra Vista Open Space Preserve, with its exceptional views.

Thanks to decades of tech dominance, San Jose is one of the planet’s wealthiest cities and has the world’s third highest GDP per capita. San Jose also has the country’s most expensive housing market, ranking fifth in the world. Steve Wozniak, who founded Apple with Steve Jobs in 1976, was born in San Jose, and the street Woz Way (outside of the Children’s Discovery Museum, which he contributed to) is named after him.