London Part 1

This was a very exciting day for me, but in some ways it wasn't good. I don't seem to be comfortable around giant crowds of people, and the older I get the more I am uncomfortable. Ok, maybe it's paranoia. Is that a terrorist in line with me? Is that a bomb or a lunch sack he is carrying? Oh, and let's not forget about the damn germs. Oh please don't let me end up a germophobe like Howard Hughes! But ya know, I can't seem to not think about that stuff, especially in a crowd. (A tiny bottle of Purel goes with me when I go out in public...oh shit, is that the start of the germophobe road??)

Anyway, we got up early and Jeff and Mary tried to help us by printing out train schedules for us. The Thatched House was too far, there was too much traffic and no parking in London, and it was going to be easier to just take the train. But there was no parking at the train station. So we had to go to a Park N Ride, catch a local bus to the train station, get the train into Victoria Station in London, and then catch "the tubes" (subways) to different parts of London. Here we are waiting at the park and ride for the local bus..

(Note: What I really liked at this point was I could read the sign behind us!) ok, so then we waited for the bus, and then we got on it...and I said "Let's take a pic of us on the bus!" and this is what I captured..

HA! Hubster was being all silly!

At the train station, there were a lot of people all milling around. Mary told us to ask for a "Day Pass" on the train, as it would give us more freedom for the trains and the buses and the tubes to ride where ever we wanted to all day without purchasing another ticket. We discovered that if we were to wait another 15 minutes to board the train, that the cost of our tickets would drop by 50%. America needs a public transportation system like this! So we bought out discounted tickets, and we stood around like vagrants for a short time. Here is a pic of our ticket.

We wandered outside, and I saw this sign, and thought it was sorta funny...

What does this mean? No nothing at any time? If so, I probably broke some law by taking a pic of it.

So then we had to get on the train. We were at one of the farthest away stops, but even then, most seats in the train cars were already taken. The train kept stopping every 8 minutes or so to take on even more passengers. People were standing, but they all seemed resigned to this. Some people were reading, some were working on business papers. Some just seemed really tired. I can not imagine a life of commuting like this day after day.

When we got into Victoria station, about an hour later, then it was all the confusion of before multiplied by about 100. People from everywhere were scurrying all around. We found the way out (well, the Hubs found it while I held on and followed him) and we emerged from under the ground onto the street with even more people scurrying around.

We decided to go to lunch first, as I only requested 2 things on our trip, and one was that we please have lunch at London's Hard Rock Cafe. It is special as it was the first one ever opened. So we found it around 11:20, and stood at the head of the line until they opened at 11:30. Only 15 minutes after we had been seated, the line was beginning to snake out of the door and down the street.

This was my first visit to any Hard Rock Cafe, and I was properly blown away by all the old rocker stuff on the walls. There was an entire wall dedicated to Pink Floyd, and lots and lots of Beatles stuff. Being a pre-teen when the Beatles came to America, they were my introduction to music, my indoctrination to music of my generation that was just beginning to take shape. Here is the Pink Floyd wall..

The bar.

Jon Anderson's harp! Man, I love Jon Anderson...

A violin Paul McCartney played..


A guitar that Pete Townsend didn't trash, ha!

A display in honor of Jimi Hendrix.

Drum set used by Led Zeppelin's drummer, now deceased. (John Botham)
OMG, I am so happy here....and the burger was the BEST! I think this was all beef, no filler, and just as I ordered it..

Directly over our table was this jacket of John Lennon's. It was so small, I was amazed at it because he was such a giant of music. I know that was silly of me, but seriously , this jacket was really really small.

After lunch, we went next door to the Hard Rock Shop. Yes, that is where the souveniers were, but also in the basement is where "The Vault" is. These are the things that are under lock and key, and only escorted people get to see what is in there, after some priceless things grew legs and walked off on their own. The Vault was indeed a vault that was used by the Queen at one time for things she wanted to safeguard, but then she began to hoard her treasures elsewhere.

This is the door to The Vault.

Inside the vault was lots of cool rock and roll memoribilia. (I think I misspelled that) We saw things like:

Another display to Jimi Hendrix...

More things of John Lennon's...


A display for John Entwhistle of "The Who"...

This man was our guide to the vault. The Hubs asked him if his hair was real....haha! (It was micro-short!)

He took a pic of us...

This was a mink covered seat that Freddie Mercury used. In the words of our friend Tom, "Freddie was gay, but man, could he ever sing!" *Disclaimer - Tom didn't exactly use these words, but I made it a little more pc, even though even this isn't exactly pc these days*

A cream colored suit worn by Eric Clapton...

A chain microphone stand used by Paul Stanley of "Kiss"...

A display for David Bowie....

A guitar played by Bo Diddley....

A display for Duane Allman.

And that is the end of the vault at the Hard Rock Store, and the end of our pics from the Hard Rock Cafe. Stay tuned for the next segment, "London, Part 2" !! :-)