Weekend Getaway to San Jose from Sacramento

If you’re looking for a weekend getaway to San Jose from Sacramento, there are reasons you may enjoy the travel to San Jose over San Francisco. For starters, there is no I-80 traffic to fight. A drive to San Francisco can take 90 minutes or 5 hours; you just don’t know. When returning from Europe once, when all we wanted to do was slink into the limo and sleep, it indeed took us 5 hours to get home from the airport. Early afternoon on Thursday, too.

We elected to drive from Sacramento for our weekend getaway to San Jose because it is less time and easier than taking the Amtrak Capitol Corridor train. Straight down I-5 to I-580.

This particular weekend was the San Jose Jazz Festival, which we did not attend. It kept the downtown area vibrant into the evening, though. You can see the hot dog vendors above, and there were plenty of these setups along the street.

Behind the hot dog guys is the Grill on the Alley, part of The Fairmont, where we had dinner. I could not find the type of fine dining we can get in Sacramento in the downtown area of San Jose. Perhaps it’s because downtown restaurants cater more to convention attendees? I dunno. The Grill on the Alley was maybe 4 stars. Adequate, but nothing much to say about it.

Before our dinner reservations, we strolled over to the historic area of San Jose, at least that’s what our map called the neighborhood. It was fairly quiet and not much seemed to be open. We had tickets to see Whitney Cummings at the San Jose Improv Comedy Club. So right after dinner, we walked over to the comedy center to stand in line.

By the time they opened the door, we were positioned about halfway in the line. But once inside, we were ushered upstairs and forced to sit in the nosebleed section, almost up against the wall. I just got our tickets a few days ago; however, there seems to be VIP seating that can be obtained in advance, which we were not privy to. Well, next time I will know.

The club also instills a 2-drink minimum. They should just take your money, and hand you tickets which you can throwaway. I am too old now to enjoy a couple of drinks with dinner and then throw down a couple more at a club. That’s too much alcohol. I mean, they can make me pay for it, but they can’t make me drink it. My husband insisted I could order a glass of water or a ginger ale but the point is I did not want to consume anything else simply because of that stupid requirement.

Whitney Cummings put on an entertaining act, but I’ve enjoyed others more on Netflix comedy specials. Comedians like Bo Burnham, Hannah Gadsby, John Mulaney, Mike Birbiglia and Iliza Shlesinger. Stand-up comedy specials are addictive. Especially when the comedian is talented, smart and dark. Like with any method of communication, though, whether written or verbal, most of us prefer an informative delivery. Whitney Cummings delivered no message.

Keeping with this vein, I would like to say our hotel room for this weekend getaway to San Jose was fabulous, but it was simply inexpensive. If it wasn’t so hot that you needed to run the AC all night, it might have been more bearable. But the in-room AC unit was outrageously loud. Every 15 minutes, the room fills with the sound of a locomotive coming right at you. Still, it cost $300 for the top floor of the Westin vs $1,000 at The Fairmont.