Furnished apartments in Santa Clara

Santa Clara is served by San Jose International Airport, located less than four miles from the city’s center. It’s a bustling transit hub with an ever-increasing selection of domestic and international flights, making it easy to fly to and from Santa Clara 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 the San Jose area, linking the Bay Area’s urban centers together. Within San Jose and Santa Clara, it’s easy to get around on the area’s light rail system, run by the VTA (Valley Transportation Authority).

If you want to explore Santa Clara’s green spaces and San Jose’s 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.

If it’s football season, pay a visit to Levi’s Stadium to watch the San Francisco 49ers play. For a near opposite environment, head to the Intel Museum and learn about the history of microchips and the company.

On the campus of Santa Clara University, you can visit the historic Mission Santa Clara de Asis, part of the area’s earliest Spanish settlement.

California’s Great America is a combined theme park and water park with 100 acres of fun and games.

For some of the area’s best attractions, head to San Jose. The Tech Interactive in downtown San Jose has exhibits on the kind of dynamic entrepreneurship that has made Silicon Valley famous. 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.

Some of the best food near Santa Clara is just a few miles away in San Jose, one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the U.S. That diversity is evident in the city’s cuisine, which features a number 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. In Santa Clara, there are excellent restaurants clustered around Bayshore Freeway and by Santa Clara University.

Santa Clara has a number of beautiful parks, including Central Park and Ortega Park. For a view of the bay, head to Alviso Marina County Park in the northern part of the city.

In San Jose, visit 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.

California is the biggest wine producer in the country, with more than 3,000 wineries that produce over 17 million gallons of wine annually. The most famous wine producing regions in the state are north of San Francisco in Napa Valley and Sonoma County. But Santa Clara isn’t far from some amazing wineries itself. The Santa Clara Valley was an agricultural center before it was a tech hub, and grapes grow exceedingly well in its rich soil. If you’re a oenophile, you may want to stop by a vineyard.