Cupertino

Cupertino is a city in Silicon Valley at the southern tip of the San Francisco Bay. It is home to Apple Inc. and a handful of other tech companies.

Understand
Cupertino (population 60,000 in 2020) is situated up against the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains. It is something of an anomaly being the one city in the South Bay that doesn't have a distinct town center or main street, though there are concentrations of upscale development in the works. It has a highly-rated local schools system and quiet neighborhoods.

Get in
It's 15 minutes west of San Jose and 45 minutes south of San Francisco. The nearest railway, Caltrain (connecting San Francisco with Gilroy), stops in downtown Sunnyvale, about a ten-minute drive from the city center. Bus service is provided by VTA.

Get around
Cupertino has 2 major streets: De Anza Blvd., which runs north-south, and Stevens Creek Blvd., which runs east-west. The intersection of these two streets is in the center of Cupertino, and most of the businesses and shopping centers in the city are located in the area.

Highways 85 and 280 cross through Cupertino. These provide excellent access to the western cities in the South Bay, and to downtown San Jose (respectively).

Public transportation in Cupertino, as is the case for much of Silicon Valley, is very poor. The predominant form of transportation is personal vehicles.

Traffic is not much of an issue and major streets come with bike lanes, so biking is relatively safe.

See
Due to its consistent tangerine/beige colors and the amount of money local authorities probably spend in maintainance, Cupertino is actually quite beautiful, with a peculiar charm distinct to that of its neighbors. The contrast with San Jose outskirts, Sunnyvale or South Los Altos can be striking at city edges.

The northeastern quarter of Cupertino (including the "city center" at the intersection of De Anza Blvd. and Stevens Creek Blvd.) hosts a large number of Apple Inc. offices. This is unusual given that tech giants tend to set their headquarters in outlying urban areas—usually beyond a freeway—and rarely approach downtown. Apple employees can easily make up the vast majority of bystanders in these locations, especially at lunchtime, and may be seen wandering around with half-open MacBooks and openly discussing confidential matters.



Do
Hiking trails can be found in the Fremont Older Open Space Preserve, with is connected with the Mid-Peninsula Open Space Preserve, offering even more options. Streets generally have bike lanes and (sparsely-used) sidewalks that can be good for jogging.



Buy
Apple's two campuses, the Apple Park and Infinite Loop, both feature a "Company Store". They sell corporate merchandise not available either at the company's standard retail stores or on the Internet, and each store sells different swag. This includes t-shirts (usually in limited edition), mugs, notebooks, caps, and other small gifts. They are open M-F 10AM to 5:30PM, and closed on some public holidays.

Eat
Cupertino has a large Chinese population and so has a lot of Asian food choices. It doesn't have a walkable downtown and most of the restaurants are in smaller strip malls.



Sleep


The following hotels and motels aren't in Cupertino proper but are very close, in San Jose, Santa Clara, and Sunnyvale. Downtown San Jose is home to the finest hotels in the area.



Stay safe
Be careful to check for ticks after hiking in fields in the bay area. There is a high rate of lyme disease transmission in the Bay Area. If a bull's-eye rash develops at the tick bite site, immediately seek medical help and treatment with antibiotics. There have been instances of mountain lion sightings in the western periphery of the city, in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains.

Cupertino is very safe, with violent crime virtually nonexistent. On the other hand, this means the local sheriff's deputies have little to do but hide behind bushes to catch drivers for moving violations. Be sure to obey traffic laws while in Cupertino.

Go next

 * One of the city's strongest assets is its accessibility to the Mid-Peninsula Open Space Preserve (aka Rancho San Antonio) which extends up and down the Santa Cruz mountains.
 * Not only is it one of the most accessible, Fremont Older Open Space Preserve is generally not as frequented as the other preserves on the peninsula, making for a quiet get-away very close to the heart of Silicon Valley.