Walking Around Downtown

I love walking. I love the slower pace, I love that I have time to think, I love the freedom of picking my path and going where cars can’t go. I’ve loved walking for years and years. In college my favorite way to de-stress was to go for a long wandering walk, listening to music. I think best when I’m walking. I love walking so much that I would rather find a way to walk or use public transportation than drive.

Walking helped me lose the baby weight after Noodle was born. It helped me de-stress. It got us out of the house and gave Noodle all kinds of things to look at, and as he got older, so much to talk about!

Living downtown, there’s tons of places for us to explore on foot. Noodle and I walk around downtown San Jose at least twice a week. Sometimes we take a bus or the light rail to go explore other areas of the South Bay. But we walk somewhere almost every day – to our neighborhood park, to a friend’s house, to the library – and it feels great to get outside.

There are some things to watch out for when you’re walking downtown. Honestly, they’re things you’d find anywhere, but they’re just in higher concentration in an urban area. Here’s my list of stroller obstacles:

• bikes on the sidewalk
• drivers who aren’t watching for you or don’t believe you have the right-of-way at an intersection (I always make eye contact with the drivers before starting to cross)
• anyone on a cell phone, texting, or looking at a pda
• uneven pavement (more a problem in the residential areas around downtown)
• curbs without ramps (also more likely in the residential areas)
• doors that don’t have auto-open so you’ll need to figure out how to get the door open and the stroller though (although usually someone holds the door for us)

But the challenges are far outweighed by the joys of getting out and walking downtown with my boy. Here’s just a short list of what we like about our adventures downtown:

• There’s LOTS to look at! Noodle stays happy with everything he gets to see, and it gives us plenty to talk about.
• There are many routes to explore. We have a few favorite ways to walk to the downtown core from our house, but it’s fun to find new paths, too. It’s really neat to see the different homes and buildings downtown and find a new business or a quirky little street we hadn’t seen before.
• Exercise! There’s no gym fees, and it’s something I can do with Noodle. Seriously, I lost 20lbs walking consistently for about 10 months, and I’m keeping it off by continuing to walk downtown at least twice a week.
• It’s free! Talk about cheap entertainment, apart from the stops for coffee and snacks.
• It gets us outside.
• It’s an opportunity to slow down a little. We can stop and watch the construction trucks for a few minutes, or pause to admire the flowers in a garden (and talk about the colors and shapes and sizes), say hi and chat with neighbors we meet, pop into the new restaurant to browse the menu and even get a snack, or just let Noodle out of the stroller to “walk for a little bit all by myself”!

I know walking this much isn’t for everyone, but I hope that more people will discover the great things that walking around downtown San Jose can offer.