San Jose

For the last scheduled local sightseeing day of 2017, I ventured beyond San Francisco to San Jose. Day trips, you see, were the future of my local sightseeing adventures. Local sightseeing in 2018 was all about visits to places in the San Francisco Bay Area. But we’ll get to that later. For today, it’s San Jose. Did you know that with a population of over 1 million, San Jose is the 10th largest city in the United States? It’s actually the largest city in the Bay Area, with 140,000 more people than San Francisco. Of course it also has almost 4 times as much land area as San Francisco, so it’s not quite as urban.

Do you know the way to San Jose? (You had to know that was coming.) I do. Or I did in 2017. If I was driving, I’d head south (well southeast actually) directly to San Jose. But to get there by public transportation, on a weekend, it’s a little more roundabout. From Downtown San Francisco, I took BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, a regional subway) under San Francisco Bay to Oakland. From Oakland, I took a train south to Santa Clara. From there, I took a bus to south to San Jose. Well, I actually took the bus to the western outskirts of San Jose to get to my 1st destination of the day.

Winchester Mystery House

The Winchester Mystery House was built in 1886 by Sarah Winchester, widow of the son of the well known Winchester firearms company. It’s a Queen Anne style mansion. I’d maybe call it Queen Anne Deluxe. The house was built in a haphazard style, with stairs that go nowhere, steps with odd and inconsistent heights, and a 2nd-floor door that opens to the outside with nothing but a drop to the ground. 3 stories of the house were damaged beyond repair in the 1906 earthquake.

I only have exterior shots on Winchester Mystery House because photography is not allowed inside. You can tell by the decorative pumpkins that I visited in October.

Sarah Winchester believed in spirits. Rumor has it that she believed that she would have bad luck if construction on the mansion was completed. So workmen kept adding additions till she died in 1922. She was also said to have slept in a different room every night. It’s not surprising that some consider the house to be haunted.

A bit of the elaborate detail on Winchester Mystery House.

Winchester Mystery House is pretty much a tourist trap. But it was fun to go there nonetheless, especially after having heard about it for decades. From there, I caught a bus across San Jose to my next stop.

History Park

I was curious about San Jose’s History Park, a collection of historical buildings arranged in a small-setting. It’s mostly comprised of buildings around San Jose that were set to be demolished but were moved to this location instead. I though a lot more could have been done with the collection to make it a more interesting visit. And some of the exhibits were closed when I was there. But as always, I got some good pictures nonetheless.

This 1922 streetcar rides around History Park.

Inside the Trolley Barn. The Trolley Barn houses antique cars and streetcars.

The Zanker House is an Italianate farmhouse (who knew there was such a thing?) built in 1868 for a German-born farmer and his family. The Zanker House is now home to the African American Heritage House, with a small collection of exhibits on the heritage of African-Americans in the region.

Migrant worker houses built between 1905 and 1920 for seasonal workers, many of them from other countries, working on area farms.

A peek inside one of the migrant worker houses.

Another peek inside one of the migrant worker houses.

Replica of the San Jose branch of the Bank of Italy, the bank’s first branch outside San Francisco.

As I learned on the very 1st day of San Francisco sightseeing, Bank of Italy was created in 1904 to serve Italian immigrants in North Beach and eventually grew so big that it became Bank of America. Bank of Italy pioneered branch banking when it opened the San Jose branch in 1909.

Inside the Bank of Italy branch replica.

This replica of Ng Shing Gung, or Temple of the Five Gods (the original was built in 1888) houses the Chinese American Historical Museum. Unfortunately, it’s only open 2 Sundays a month.

After spending some time at History Park, I was ready to move on. (I mean, even the name, History Park, is dull. They need some German museum consultants to come in and make the whole place more interesting. It definitely has potential.)

Downtown San Jose

From History Park, it was another bus ride to Downtown San Jose. I didn’t have anything specific on the itinerary. I figured I’d just bum around and take some pictures. (So unlike me!)

St. Joseph’s Cathedral

The Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph (aka San José) is the 5th incarnation of San Jose oldest church congregation. Construction was completed in 1885.

Beautiful ceiling at St. Joseph’s Cathedral.

Exterior of St. Joseph’s Cathedral at the crossroads of Downtown San Jose.

Fairmont San Jose

I was excited to see the Fairmont San Jose. It was like seeing an old friend after 13 years. I used to work for a luxury hotel company that owned, among other properties, the Fairmont San Jose as well as the original Fairmont on Nob Hill in San Francisco.

San Jose Museum of Art

The Tech Museum of Innovation

The azure-domed Tech Museum of Innovation is Downtown San Jose’s most distinctive building.

The Tech Museum of Innovation, known as The Tech, is an appropriate cultural institution for the world’s tech capital, Silicon Valley. (Apparently the Tech was renamed The Tech Interactive in 2019.) I saw some IMAX movies there when I used to come to San Jose for work. I decided to visit History Park because I had been to The Tech previously and I didn’t have time to see both on Day 7. I came to wish I had gone to The Tech again anyway because seeing it again would have been more interesting that seeing History Park. But hey, I got some good pictures, right? And that’s what matters!

I took this rear-view picture of The Tech as I was on my way to catch the bus that was the 1st leg on my roundabout journey back to San Francisco.

I have to say, I enjoyed my unstructured time in Downtown San Jose more than my time at History Park. But I shouldn’t dwell on that.

Do You Know the Way Back to San Francisco?

From Downtown San Jose, I first caught the bus to the Fremont BART station. At the time, the Fremont station was as far south as BART went. Now you can go as far as North San Jose. Eventually, you’ll be able to take BART all the way to Downtown San Jose. (It still seems funny though that you have to go around San Francisco Bay to get to San Jose by BART instead of just heading down the San Francisco Peninsula. But whatever works.)

I took this picture from Fremont BART station. To me, nothing says Northern California like these golden hills. (Interestingly, it turns out that the yellow grass was brought to California from Europe by the Spanish because it was better for grazing than the native grass.)

When I got back to San Francisco, I promptly had dessert. I had one more San Francisco ice cream place left to check out. (That made 14 ice cream trips over 2 years of San Francisco sightseeing.) It closed early, so I head to go there before dinner. As a matter of fact, that’s why I had to leave San Jose without having dinner there. My itinerary in San Jose was too tight to schedule in any dining while I was there.

After ice cream, it was dinner time. I wanted to do something special for my last scheduled dinner at the end of 2 seasons of sightseeing, so I went to SOMA StrEat Food Park, a lot in South of Market with a rotating group of food trucks.

As you’ll find out in the Food Diary for Day 7, the pizza I got at this truck was mmm mmm good!

[Factual information is primarily gathered from Wikipedia, so you know it must be true.]