The Five Best Things to do in Milpitas, CA

So imagine you find yourself in Milpitas, California, United States of America, and you need to spend your time somehow. You might be wondering what to do, except maybe the ever-looming option of packing all of your belongings into the trunk of your car and going somewhere you would actually want to be, such as San Francisco, or Yosemite National Park, or the Pacific Coast¹. Well, you’re in luck! After extensive research, i.e., living here for two months, here is a list of your only my five favorite options in Milpitas, CA²

1. Sierra Vista Open Preserve & Sierra Road

Up first are the great outdoors, right outside the Milpitas city limits! Going outside in Milpitas might make you depressed, as all the nature you can possibly see are small mountains covered in dried grass, a macabre sight. Yet these mountains are actually a fun place to go to!

From CA-237, continue on Calaveras Blvd West until you leave the city behind you. You will eventually find yourself on curvy mountain roads that turn into Sierra Rd, a wonderful path through the Sierra. Of course, this only applies if you have a car. Tough luck otherwise³

On top of the hills you will discover Sierra Vista Open Preserve, an open preserve full of dried grass with some paths that you can traverse on an afternoon hike. From the parking spot, you have a great view of the entire Silicon Valley.⁴ I highly recommend the loop trail that opposite the valley, however. A one-way trail of about 3km, it will take you through the hills, to a little bench under a tree with a great view of San Francisco if the weather is nice, and up a mountain to the top of the preserve. The bench is one of my favorite spots to read a book and have an iced tea in the evening. The great thing is that no American will ever come and bother you, since it requires physical movement.

And of course, since you are looking out West over the Valley, you will have a wonderful time at sunset! At this time of year, you will almost definitely have clear skies with just a little smog in the air, making the sky turn beautiful hues and emphasizing the glistening city lights. But be careful of coyotes at dusk!

Also, be there early enough! Although no American will bother you on the trails, the limited parking will be gone quickly a few minutes before sunset.

2. Milpitas Public Library

If the outside is not your thing, here’s a great indoor activity: reading a book at the local library. Located right on N Main St, the library is in the center of the city while being far to reach from almost anywhere at the same time. Here’s a few reasons Milpitas Public Library is amazing:

1. It’s open until 9pm on weekdays! Sure, only 7pm on Friday to Sunday, but that’s still pretty good! That means that even after work and even after dinner, you can still go there and pick up a book.

2. Most of the things are fully automated. You can reserve things in the Santa Clara Country Library District (SCCLD) app on your phone and pick them up using the self-service stations, no need for human interaction. I love the app a lot – even though it’s not the amazing piece of software, you can peruse their entire catalog, put things on a wishlist, order books from other libraries in the district, and put in a reservation if all the copies of the book you like are unavailable at the moment. If you order a book, just pick it up a few days later (they’ll email you) from the holding section right by the entrance. To drop a book off, you don’t even need to go inside!

3. It’s a clean and nicely put-together place. The entire building (or rather buildings – from the outside, it looks like there are three separate buildings while it’s just one on the inside) looks newly remodeled, and everything is clean. Inside, everyone seems really nice and friendly, it’s mostly kids (and kids reading really makes us happy, doesn’t it?!).

4. They have a great selection. It does feel like there’s no book that they don’t have! They had a few of Eve Babitz' books, they have Jarett Kobek, they have most of what Carley recommends. And their non-fiction section is packed, too! We are really benefitting from the collection of Santa Clara County libraries.

5. They have work spaces for people who don’t want to spend all their time on Starbucks. There are a lot of desks and cubicles available upstairs, and when I tried them they were mostly empty. There is Wi-Fi, but I had trouble using it (that might have been my computer, though). The only issue I had was that the A/C was blowing loudly, maybe they will fix that at some point.

6. It’s free (for residents)! Getting a library card is entirely free if you’re a local – a lease agreement is enough to prove that, no passport or anything needed. Getting a proper library card allows you to borrow up to 100 books for 15 weeks at a time. And apparently, they will also let you create guest cards that allow you to borrow three books at a time.

A few of the favs of the books I picked up at Milpitas Public Library:

• Eve Babitz – Eve’s Hollywood
• Jarett Kobek – The Future Won’t Be Long
• Dolly Alderton – Ghosts
• Avni Doshi – Burnt Sugar

3. RāwASF Plant-Based Café

Now here’s some food! Food in Milpitas can be a bit of an issue. Apart from the obligatory fast-food chains, such as the two (!) Taco Bells on Main St and the Walmart parking lot, you will mostly find Chinese, Korean, Nepalese, and Indian restaurants. There are a few very nice options among those, too, such as Annapoorna and Loving Hut, but none are as cool of a place to be as the RāwASF Plant-Based Café! As the name suggests, everything here is completely plant-based.

Their menu combines contemporary American cuisine, i.e., burgers and fries, with a few smoothie options. Additionally, they serve some weird custom coffee-based drinks, variations on Avocado toast, and a truffle pizza. Their vegan burgers use a choice of Beyond Meat, Impossible burger, and vegetable patty, but their fries and drinks are really what you’re here for. Combine all of that delicious food with a Zara Home aesthetic, and you will want to come here every day!

4. Work in Tech

Of course, there is one main reason you come to Milpitas in the first place: to work in tech! Milpitas hosts some of the greatest companies in the world, such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise.⁵ As everything here is incredibly expensive, they will pay you huge amounts of money. And the work environment attracts some of the smartest people around, giving you an opportunity to learn and grow. What more could you ask for to do for ten hours a day?!

5. Trader Joe’s

Last but not least, one of my absolute favorites is Trader Joe’s. As Emma Chamberlain puts it: Grocery shopping cures boredom.

Milpitas residents are lucky to have a Trader Joe’s nearby, right off of Main St and across from Great Mall. Trader Joe’s have the right mix of premium organic food⁶, custom products that you won’t find anywhere else, quirky product descriptions that make all the cynics go wild, and hot people. I love their huge selection of salads, nuts, and vegan alternatives, and their prices are high but worth it.

Here’s a small list of good things to get at Trader Joe’s:

• Berries! Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, all neatly packed and without mold.
• A vegan green pesto that tastes almost like a real thing but skips the cheese, replacing it with something else⁷ – goes great with some of their organic, bronze-shaped pasta.
• Cranberry-almond-cashew trail mix, with roasted but unsalted nuts. That preparation makes it suited both as an on-trail consumption and as a muesli mix-in.
• Vegan butter, beyond what we call margarine back home. I’ve made the mistake of cooking with a different brand vegan butter at some point, which tasted terrible, but this one is actually a good option and tastes almost like the real thing.

Their vegan Parmesan is also much better than what I got at Whole Foods – f@*k Whole Foods.

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Bonus! Here are some places to avoid.

1. The Outside

If you can avoid it, don’t spend too much time in the open air in Milpitas – or Smellpitas, as some people call it. As Wikipedia diplomatically puts it, “Milpitas occasionally experiences odorous air,” which puts it midly. In summary, the nearby landfill, sewage treatment plan, and San Francisco Bay salt marshes all contribute to a pesky smell that is especially pungent further West in the city and when the wind blows East.

An interesting fact is that the only movie ever set in Milpitas, 1976’s The Milpitas Monster, revolves around a giant monster born from an overfilled landfill.

2. Great Mall

Great Mall just sucks. There are two Starbucks within the mall – both are closed permanently. That’s how much it sucks. Sure, it’s big, but lots of the storefronts are just closed. There is also a huge parking lot that’s just a bunch of asphalt. Who comes up with this stuff?

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1. Please note that you might not actually want to be in these places either, but these might be better options than Milpitas. ↩︎

2. In arbitrary order. ↩︎

3. You will occasionally see some MAMILs riding their bikes up there as well. ↩︎

4. Assuming this is something that you actually want. ↩︎

5. Or rather: a small part of Hewlett Packard Labs, which in itself is a small part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. ↩︎

6. The only foods they don’t have are Oatly oat milk, although they do have a store-brand version that tastes similar to the regular Oatly, and CLIF blueberry almond butter cereal, which is a key food item in my life at the moment. ↩︎

7. I don’t know what they put in there, but it’s good! ↩︎