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and dining district with a central European- style promenade lined with boutiques, eateries and landscaped gardens. A farmers market, live music, cultural events, restau- rants ranging from French bistros to Mexican taquerias are also big draws to Santana Row. Palo Alto, home of Stanford University, also features a tiny museum significant to Silicon Valley history: the HP Garage, the garage where Stanford classmates Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard founded Hewlett-Packard in 1939. Nestled at the foot of the mountains are Saratoga and Los Gatos, hamlets with pic- ture-perfect Victorian homes and Craftsman bungalows. Vast stretches of parks, open space preserves and rows of vineyards and winery tasting rooms cluster in the surrounding mountains, as well as south of San Jose, along the Hecker Pass Highway and around the city of Gilroy, which is home to an annual Garlic Festival that draws thousands. With its Mediterranean climate and loca- tion 50 miles south of San Francisco and 30 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, it's no wonder that Silicon Valley developed as a world center for innovation, drawing some of the best and brightest engineers in the world to a quiet valley where once only fruit trees blossomed. City & Town San Jose, the county seat of Santa Clara County, was founded in 1777 and today is the largest city in Northern California and tenth largest in the nation. Downtown has undergone significant revitalization over the last decade, with historic buildings such as the California Theatre on the same block where dozens of software companies have relocated. In 2014, the adjacent city of Santa Clara welcomed the opening of Levi's Stadium, home to the San Francisco 49ers NFL team and Super Bowl 50 venue in 2016. Heritage and Culture San Jose offers a big-city cultural scene with first-rate museums that include the Tech Museum, where visitors discover what made Silicon Valley successful, the Chil- dren's Discovery Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art and the West Coast's largest collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum and Planetarium. About 10 percent of San Jose's population is Vietnamese, and this ethnic group has a strong presence particularly in restaurants along Story Road and at the Museum of the Boat People in charming History Park, which also features buildings representing Portuguese, Chinese, Italian and other ethnic communities that were instrumental in the city's long history. 86 2 0 1 7 T R A V E L G U I D E T O C A L I F O R N I A INSIDER'S TIP ยป Mingle with Silicon Valley's creative types at the FIRST FRIDAYS ART WALK each month (except January and July), when downtown San Jose museums are free and galleries stay open late for an art crawl along South First Street. Live music and special performances take place at various venues downtown, including in SAN PEDRO SQUARE , a bustling historic food hall with music on stage Thursdays through Sundays. Enjoy sampling dishes from the diverse eateries and take a seat outdoors around 18 th -century PERALTA ADOBE , San Jose's oldest building. MTAIRA/SHUTTERSTOCK ; MATTHEW CORLEY/SHUTTERSTOCK . OPPOSITE: FARUK ATES/CREATIVE COMMONS/FLICKR ; ARUN123/SHUTTERSTOCK