Central San Mateo Apartments for Rent

San Mateo lies between the hillside community of Hillsborough and the bayside suburb of Foster City. It has its own waterfront, a commuter train station, and wonderful parks. Central San Mateo is a downtown with character. It’s full of good restaurants and distinctive small shops, and its side streets hold a harmonious variety of small single-family homes, duplexes, condominiums, and apartments.

Central San Mateo is north of the neighborhoods of Hayward Park and Baywood-Aragon and south of North Central San Mateo. It is east of Hillsborough and west of San Francisco Bay and Foster City. The zip code for central San Mateo is 94401.

Nearby elementary public schools include Baywood, Sunnybrae, and Parkside, while intermediate schools include Bayside and Borel Middle Schools. San Mateo and Aragon are the local high schools and the College of San Mateo is the two-year community college.

Parks are one of the great pleasures of San Mateo. Central Park has a mini-train that delights children, while many older couples fondly recall their weddings in the gazebo. The tea garden is another of the park’s appealing features.

Coyote Point County Park has a hands-on natural history museum atop rocky Coyote Point. Below the point, beachcombers collect wave-scoured glass and tiny purple sea-snail shells. When the wind is right, clouds of windsurfers dart like flocks of butterflies inland from the pleasure craft that set out from Coyote Point Yacht Harbor.

San Mateo is 30 minutes from San Francisco and 40 minutes from San Jose by the Bayshore Freeway. It has a lovely Mediterranean climate that avoids much of San Jose’s summer heat and San Francisco’s fog. Yet on some summer afternoons, light fog comes trickling over the Santa Cruz Mountains to cool the city streets to the perfect degree.