Welcome to San Francisco!

We've returned from a pretty intense trip through New Zealand and North America, and only now are we getting to stuff like the blogs. Watch this space though, there's lots to come.

With an amazing array of neat and cool stuff throughout, what could be a better start than the magnificent hat we saw in San Francisco's International airport. It is, of course, from the San Francisco institution Beach Blanket Babylon. Why is it in the airport? Well for a start this is an airport with several art galleries and a aviation history museum, and secondly, it's in honour of an anniversary:

"In honor of Beach Blanket Babylon's 35th Anniversary, the San Francisco Airport is presenting a display of various hats that have appeared in the show throughout the years. At San Francisco International you will find the 25th Anniversary Skyline Hat, which was first presented at the Herbst Theatre in 1999. This lavish hat, which was part of our Silver Anniversary finale, paid tribute to Steve Silver. The hat is 15 feet wide, 10 feet deep and grew to 29 feet tall. At 300 pounds, the brim alone required 60 yards of taffeta and 200 ostrich feathers."

From Jo Silver's blog here.

This was just one of the magnificent and over the top things we got to see in an all too brief stay in San Francisco - most guided by our hosts Mike and Ania.

Some hat.