First time I visit the conference. First time I visit San Francisco and first time I visit the United States.

Landed yesterday in the afternoon. I'm here with fellow Ibuildings-guy Tom and our girlfriends.

Today we went into San Francisco to do some sightseeing. Went to fisherman's warf, saw an airshow, did some shopping (both Tom and I did take european->us outlet converters, but we hadn't taken into account that some of our adapters do not support 110 volt

San Francisco is a very nice city with remarkably friendly people. Tomorrow we'll visit the Golden Gate Bridge & Park, and for next friday after the conference we've got tickets for Alcatraz.

I'm really looking forward to the Zend Conference. Meeting lots of old friends and hopefully a lot of new PHP enthousiasts. Sessions that I'm interested in are the ones from Matthew, Ilia, Eli and
Joel. There are many more I'd like to see; unfortunately I can only visit one at a time.

Some tips for those that haven't arrived yet:

• Tom is in the Hyatt (where the conference is); I'm in the Bay Landing Hotel about a 3 minutes walk from there, because the Hyatt was already booked for some of the days I'm here. However, it turns out that the Bay Landing Hotel not only is 80$ per night cheaper, it also has complementary breakfast (18$ in the Hyatt) and free internet (9$ in the Hyatt), so that turned out just fine.
• When we arrived, we took a taxi to the hotel. Today we discovered that one floor up from the taxi stand at SFO airport, there is a 'hotel courtesy shuttle' stand, with free shuttles going to most hotels in the region, including the Hyatt.
• When you do take a taxi, tell them 'Hyatt Burlingame'. Tom discovered that just 'Hyatt' takes you to the Hyatt in san francisco city center.

So, if you're going too, see you at ZendCon! And if you're not going, you're missing out on a great event!