Santa Teresa Foothills East, San Jose, CA

Santa Teresa Foothills East is where south San Jose starts to climb, with houses stepping up the lower slopes of the Santa Teresa Hills. For a lot of them, Santa Teresa County Park is the back fence. Homes sit on elevated lots beside protected open space, which is the defining luxury here. The park spreads across the ridge with a long network of dirt trails shared by hikers, horseback riders and mountain bikers. The climb to Coyote Peak is the local workout, and the park also holds a golf course, an archery range and the old Bernal-Gulnac-Joice Ranch. The Pueblo Day Use Area off Bernal Road is the main trailhead with parking. Homes run from ranch houses of the late 1960s to larger two-story houses built in later decades, many set up on the slope with views back across the valley. The hillside keeps the streets quiet and a little removed, and the neighborhood borders Cottle to Lean, Blossom Valley and the west half of the foothills. Coffee and food are down the hill on Santa Teresa Boulevard. Moonbeans Coffee, near the Kaiser campus, is the regular stop, known for its vanilla and honey Moon Latte and its outdoor tables. Mandarin Gourmet, on the same boulevard, is the call for potstickers stuffed with pork and cabbage and crisped in heavy iron skillets. Village Oaks on Cottle Road covers quick errands and a fast lunch, with Chipotle and Dave's Hot Chicken among the tenants. Almost nothing here is walkable except the trails, so every errand starts with the car. The grassland slopes also put these streets in wildland fire country, which makes fire season something to plan around each year, from clearing brush to keeping an eye on the hills in late summer. The flip side of living against the hills is real and worth naming: it is a car-dependent perch with little you can walk to, and the grassland foothills put it in the wildland-urban interface, so fire season is something you plan around rather than ignore. For anyone who wants trails out the door and a view worth more than a short commute, the east foothills make the case as well as any address in the south of the city.