Plaza de Cesar Chavez

[fish]

Instead of stocking up on Budweiser and tritips for the superbowl, I decided to head into downtown San Jose to capture some of our local landmarks.

Founded in 1777, San Jose was California's first civilian settlement, first incorporated city, and site of the first state capital. San José is also the largest city in the Bay Area, located roughly 50 miles south of San Francisco and 390 miles north of Los Angeles, with a population of roughly 930,000 people.

As early as 1874, organized baseball was played in San Jose and since the opening of Municipal Stadium in 1942, baseball has been a mainstay to the city of San Jose as minor league affiliates from nine different major league clubs have sent their finest prospects through “Muni”. Past affiliations from 1942 to the present include the following teams: Boston Red Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates, Los Angeles/California Angels, Kansas City Royals, Cleveland Indians, Seattle Mariners, Montreal Expos, Baltimore Orioles and San Francisco Giants. Eat your heart out, San Francisco. :)

Without further ado, please follow me on a tour of Plaza de Cesar Chavez, in the heart of downtown San Jose.

At the southern tip of the plaza, sits a statue of Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec name for the Feathered-Serpent deity of ancient Mesoamerica, one of the main gods of many Mexican and northern Central American civilizations.



When the statue was erected in 1997, amid hysteria from religious groups claiming that the plumed serpent was pagan, there was a running joke palindrome "Park God - Dog Krap". I'm sure you can see why.





Plaza de Cesar Chavez is also home to the Technology Museum of Innovation (aka "the tech").









In the middle of the plaza is a fountain at street level to allow people to easily cool off in the summer.



That's our nicest hotel in the background - The Fairmont.










Look! We've got a couple of tall buildings too!




Behind the fountain, you can see the purple dome of the Imax theater inside the Tech.




San Jose Museum of Art, with the Knight Ridder HQ on the right.











Just down Market St. from MoA is St. Joseph's Cathedral Basilica, a Jesuit parish from 1849 until 1992.









and some other stuff...




















While not technically part of Plaza de Cesar Chavez, the Children's Discovery Museum is a must see for any family visiting the area.





Well, that pretty much concludes our tour of downtown San Jose. I hope you enjoyed looking at our local architecture as much as I enjoyed shooting it. But before we go, no trip to downtown San Jose would be complete without a visit to the world famous Lou's Living Donut Museum, in the shadow of the Guadalupe Expressway....




Thanks for visiting.

[gus]

wide ...wide ....wide

[Michiel de Brieder]

I was expecting food shots



But these are kinda nice too I like the Basilica shot and the shots with the fountain very much! Thanks for sharing fish
(note the absence of a capitol 'f' in fish, 'cause there can only be one Fish )

[obelix]

Hey

Very nice shots. Really liked them. I used to work in downtown San Jose. i have some keepers from inside the church and the museum. Great photo ops inside there.

Thanks for sharing.

[Steve Cavigliano]

Beautiful shots of our fair city, Fish


You even made it look good....LOL You captured all of our major landmarks. CC park, the Fairmont, St Joe's (did you get any shots inside?), The Tech, SJ Museaum of Art, the Discovery Museum and of course the the Donut Museum on Auzerais (you missed Babe the giant muffler dude though.....lol)


Nice work!!


Thanks for sharing these,
Steve

[ian408]

Nice shots of downtown. Creative use of wide angle too.

ian