Day Trip, San Jose

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Little Kabul is a small area of Fremont's Centerville District, about 10 miles from San Jose. Though just a block long, the area hosts some 20 Afghan businesses and the city of Fremont has some 15,000 Afghan immigrants, making it the largest Afghan community in the United States. Little Kabul has a good market called the Maiwand Market as well as a few restaurants, the most famous being the Afghan Kabob House and Salang Pass.

Little Kabul is located along Fremont Ave in Fremont, between Peralta Blvd and Central Ave. There are a few more Afghan places along nearby Thornton Ave.

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Just 15 miles from downtown San Jose is NASA's Ames Research Center located in Mountain View (home of Google, Mozilla, AOL, and Sun Microsystems). NASA Ames was founded in 1939 and its partnerships in Silicon Valley have allowed it to experiment with high tech applications such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. NASA Ames is home to the world's largest wind tunnel.

Ames Research Center occupies Moffett Field, a former US Navy and US Army installation. The Navy began operations here in 1933, then the Army Air Corps took over operations from 1935 to 1941. During World War II, the Navy resumed operations at Moffett, including antisubmarine warfare operations. In 1994 Naval Air Station Moffett Field was closed and the entire facility turned over to NASA.

Adjacent to Moffett Field is Onizuka Air Force Station which was recommended for closure in the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Committee.

NASA Ames is located just of Highway 101 and parts of the facility are open to the public.

Gilory is about a 45 minute drive from San Jose, and is also known as Garlic City. Here in Gilroy they Grow Garlic and once a year these have a festival where you can buy allsort of garlic items. A favourite is Garlic Ice-Cream !

The first Sunday in May is the annual Saratoga Rotary Fine Arts Show, held at West Valley College in Saratoga. It is the largest, juried, one day, fine arts show in the western USA. Enjoy a day filled with art (to buy or admire), entertainment, and food in a beautiful setting - and the weather is almost always wonderful! The local school across the street used to hold a pancake breakfast fund raiser that same day - if they still do, go support the kids over there as well.

Villa Montalvo, in nearby Saratoga, is a nice historic estate with gardens, nature trails and a wonderful Mediterranean-style villa where many art events take place. I love to walk the trails up above the buildings, and many people like to picnic on the lawns. A nice place for a family Sunday afternoon. People used to be able to have their weddings there, perhaps you still can. 15400 Montalvo Rd., Saratoga.

San Jose is in a very central location. It is located about 1-1.5 hours from San Francisco and 30-40 minutes from Santa Cruz. Other Bay Area cities are also close by, so you can make various day trips to various parts of the Bay Area. I find hotels slightly cheaper in San Jose than San Francisco.