I've lived in San Jose since 2009, but I'm just now giving San Jose the tourist treatment I've given other towns.
The first European settlement in San Jose was the Pueblo de San Jose de Guadalupe, founded in 1777 when California was still part of the Spanish empire. In 1791, the Pueblo moved to what is now the Plaza de Cesar Chavez, downtown.
The Luis Maria Peralta Adobe, 1797, is the last remaining vestige of the Pueblo.
California passed from Spain to Mexico in 1821, then to the United States in 1848, and San Jose became California's first capitol under the U.S. A plaque near the Plaza de Cesar Chavez marks the location of the first California congress building.
Here are a few typical views of downtown now. The first is looking down First Street, and the skyscraper in the background is the Bank of Italy Building (1925).
San Jose has a postmodernist City Hall designed by Richard Meier, who also designed the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
Downtown has a lot of murals.
Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who famously protested on the Olympic medal stand in 1968, were from San Jose State University. A mural near City Hall remembers the protest.
San Jose is the south end of Silicon Valley. A lot of tech companies are headquartered here, like Adobe, Ebay, PayPal, and Cisco. Intel's headquarters are just outside of San Jose in Santa Clara.
The Adobe building has the San Jose Sempahore, four illuminated disks that transmit encoded mystery messages. The first was discovered to be Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 in 2007, and the second was discovered to be Neil Armstrong's "one small step for man" speech in 2017.
Lick Observatory is just east of San Jose. The observatory has some historic instruments, including the Great Lick Refractor, which discovered Jupiter's moon Amalthea (1892), and the Crossly reflecting telescope, which discovered Jupiter's moons Himalia (1904) and Elara (1905).
The observatory also has modern instruments, including the Shane 3-meter telescope.
I found the drive up to the observatory harrowing, with sheer drops on the side of the twisty road, but it seemed popular with bikers and motorcyclists. I did see a ginormous spider on the drive up, which I think was a tarantula.
The observatory's benefactor, James Lick, is buried under the observatory.
The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum is west of downtown. The museum has artifacts arranged by time period, a walk-in replica of an underground tomb, and reproductions of some key items like the Rosetta Stone and Code of Hammurabi.
The museum has some mummies, including the "mummy from Usermontu's coffin."
San Jose's hockey team, the Sharks, play at the SAP Center downtown, which is also a concert venue.
The San Jose Earthquakes, the soccer team, play at PayPal Park next to the airport.
The San Francisco 49ers footbal team actually play in Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, just outside San Jose.
I'm a long-time gamer, so San Jose's game stores are some of my favorite places in town. Game Kastle Santa Clara is near the airport.
Illusive Comics split off a game store a few years ago, Isle of Gamers, but now they've recombined the comics and games stores into one store in a new place. Here's a pano of the inside.
Among the famous people from San Jose, the ones that jump out at me are Cesar Chavez and Steve Wozniak. Cesar Chavez was a California labor leader who founded the National Farm Workers Assoication, which later became part of the United Farm Workers; "his world-view combined leftist politics with Roman Catholic social teachings." Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple Computer with Steve Jobs and designed the Apple II home computer, their hugely successful first product.
San Jose is a million people, but it's often overshadowed by San Francisco, which is forty miles north and more of a cultural capital. I was told once that people write songs about San Francisco but not San Jose, but actually Do You Know the Way to San Jose is about San Jose.
