Hollister is a relaxed Central Coast town with a tight-knit community, lower cost-of-living than the Bay Area, and plenty of outdoor options—vineyards, local farmers’ markets and easy access to Pinnacles National Park—making it a pleasant, low-stress base for multi-week assignments.
For livelier weekends, San Jose offers big-city dining, cultural events and transit connections, while Monterey delivers coastal scenery, the Monterey Bay Aquarium and scenic drives, so you can balance quiet workweeks with urban or seaside escapes.