Bay Area DUers...I need your help

[VelmaD]

I have a 12+ hour layover in San Jose tomorrow (from about 8 in the morning til about 9:30 at night). Anyone got any brilliant ideas for what I could do with myself for all that time?

[yvr girl]

1. That sucks

:hug:

[VelmaD]

2. Yup...what sucks worse...

is I have two really good friends in the Bay Area and neither one of them could get off work to spend the day with me. :(

[yvr girl]

3. Time to read War and Peace

Do you have a solution to Saturday?

[VelmaD]

4. I'll pm you about Saturday...

here in a minute.

[cleofus1]

5. check out this link

the odds are against you but this may help...


http://www.sanjoseca.gov/attract.html

[VelmaD]

6. Thanks a ton

Hopefully I can find something fun to do with myself. :)

[musette_sf]

17. The Rosicrucian Museum!

http://www.rosicrucian.org/park/museum/index.html

this place is a blast... the buildings around it are also quite lovely... great examples of 1930s Moorish architecture.

[NV Whino]

7. Winchester Mystery House

[cally]

8. Why don't you head into SF?

I think there's a shuttle into the city.

[VelmaD]

9. Mostly 'cause I'm a chicken...

and I'm scared I won't be able to find my way back to the airport. I can't miss that flight to Seattle.

I'm kinda a country girl at heart and cities I've never been in before kinda intimidate me. I need a native guide. :)

[yvr girl]

10. You can act suspiciously

See if you can cause a major security scare and then act all innocent.

'Waaa, I'm just a small town girl from Texas.'

It'll pass the time.

[VelmaD]

11. Ohhh...nice plan...

I'm an auditor too...so I could go around the airport looking for security breaches and seeing how far I could get before anyone notices me.

[VelmaD]

12. kickety

:kick: just in case any locals wanta hang tomorrow

[cally]

13. kick for the evening crowd

[XemaSab]

14. warning:

the airport is small, but the lines are LOOOONG... get back to the airport WELL in advance of the flight leaving.

[VelmaD]

15. I will definitely keep that in mind

thanks :)

[XemaSab]

16. Have fun in the bay area!

n/t

[greatauntoftriplets]

18. My brother-in-law's brother lives in San Jose....

But he is a repuke and obnoxious about it.

:scared:

I wouldn't foist him on you. Not sure where the Winchester Mystery House is in relation to San Jose, but I have read about it and it sounds fascinating.

[NuttyFluffers]

19. oooh.... bad airport to idle at.

actually, just about all the bay area airports are pretty boring areas to idle at. but san jose is probably the most boring. small airport, heavy traffic (foot and car), spread out city without much in the way of doing anything nearby...

k, check these things out, if you want to grab something quick to squeeze in:

winchester mystery house
roscicrucian museum (mummies!)
san jose tech museum
.... um... wow, there really isn't much to do in san jose...
moffet field?
...... well, there's some good restaurants, so you can choose any and be pretty successful. um, won't get to see redwoods easily, or the bridges, or pretty much anything.

it's this big suburban wasteland with hardly anything to do or see and little personal flavor. sure there's malls and ... malls and... business parks and... homes, but there's hardly anything i can recommend for a memorable day trip there.
berryesa flea market? too big and far away for just a big ol' flea market.
the universe that is fry's electronics? nah.
the rinky-dink mickey mouse light rail? waste of time.
great america? do you really want to go riding a roller coaster surrounded by teeny-bops before going on a plane flight?
scouting the famous tech HQs and branches? ...why? are lobbies fun?
perhaps that small strip of local flavor in sunnyvale, but it's just bars and expensive restaurants on one lone street surrounded by suburbia.

there's some interesting history i know of at fremont tri-city area. where chaplin used to do his films, the old spanish mission, the old ardenwood homestead, the sacred hills of coyote hills next to the bay, the old salt company and salt flats, the ohlone people museum, the secret entrance to sunol and the bar/steakhouse that holds the "dog that was elected mayor" stuffed and used as a beer dispensor (it "pisses" your drink into your cup), the strip of niles where biker gangs like to hang (11 bars in under like 4 blocks), part of bay estuary state park.

and then there's palo alto with all its history and stanford.

the trouble is airport location and leaving and coming back. :( that part of the bay needs more mass transit.

[Kadie]

20. A few suggestions...

The Tech Museum of Innovation
http://www.thetech.org/

Scott's Seafood
http://www.scottsseafood.com/

Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum & Planetarium
http://www.egyptianmuseum.org/

[NuttyFluffers]

21. k, norm mineta SJ int'l airport is next to light rail and...

just a bit away from downtown San Jose. close by are rosicrucian museum (the int'l HQ house for this egyptian spiritual sect and the largest mummy collection in america i believe), the tech museum (near downtown), SJ museum of art (recently had some cool modern display on comics and another about avant garde japanese artist's pop culture work), several museums on quilts, and in that area you can see knight ridder's big tall building (is it hq or chapter? dunno). there's some excellent vegetarian around there and the downtown area is pretty cute (a tad dead, but cute).

and most of it should be accessible by light rail and a few blocks walking or taxi. just yahoo maps or google, select nearby museums, and you can see it.

[democracyindanger]

22. caltrain

Get a cab at the airport, tell the driver to take you to the nearest caltrain station, catch a train to San Francisco (the rail ends there), catch another cab to Union Square, or just walk along the Embarcadero (where you got off the train) to the Ferry Building.

San Jose's pretty boring--just generally, would you rather spend a day in San Jose or San Francisco? Just be sure to catch the train at the right time to get back to SJ from SF.

[salin]

23. San Jose Tech museum is cool

I don't recall how far it is from the airport.

I would love that kind of layover there - but I lived there for a number of years (well, just a tad north) - and would be calling all sorts of folks up for a visit. But alas, that doesn't help you much.

There is a small 'Japanese Town' (don't recall the correct title for the area) that has some reportedly great restaurants.

If you have the resources to rent a car for that short period of time - I would rent a car, drive over the "mountains" and go to Santa Cruz (about a 45 minute drive, though traffic these days might have pushed it to an hour.) Beautiful progressive area - and can get some time by the ocean.