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Published: June 21st 2009
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But Before I Do…
My last day in London for a while and I decide to head back to Knightsbridge for a couple more museums. The
Victoria & Albert Museum houses an extensive collection of sculptures and quite possibly the largest paintings I’ve ever seen produced by Raphael. After a couple of hours perusing the halls, I encountered something different that caught my eye… on the outside of the museum. One of the walls has been left as is after the World War II bombings and provides a sober reminder of how close we came to losing so much history and culture through acts of war. It also made me think “how many times has London nearly been destroyed, what with fires, invasions and war?”
Across the street from the V & A Museum is the
Science Museum, a more hands on museum with the purposes of education in everything from the original steam engines to computers, medicine, energy, space exploration and tomorrow’s inventions.
Feeling peckish??? I was! so it was back up to Hyde Park Corner where another institution began.
Hard Rock Café London was started when two Americans decided a place that sells good old fashioned
American food was needed in London. They bought an old Rolls Royce dealership and renovated it into the very first Hard Rock Café. The story goes that Eric Clapton loved the place and lived just around the corner, but as the popularity grew with other stars that also lived in the area, he struggled to get in. After one such incident, he returned with one of his guitars and handed it to the owner and said they could have it if a spot was always reserved for him. This was the first piece of memorabilia that Hard Rock Café came to own. When on tour, Pete Townsend from The Who came in and loved the place. He saw the guitar there and on returning home, sent one of his own to the café with a letter that read “Mine’s just as good as his.” These to guitars still sit above the bar here and are the foundation of the company to this day.
Next door to the café is the shop that has the
Hard Rock Vault. before Hard Rock bought the premises, it used to be the Royal Bank and Queen Victoria had actually kept her jewels in
it a while back. It now houses the rarest of the memorabilia including Kurt Cobain’s guitar, an adjusted song lyrics penned by John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix’s self customised guitar which is worth over three million US dollars.
The evening was spent finding out where I needed to get to and what I wanted to see for the next part of the trip, as in the morning I was off into the countryside bound for Cantebury and Dover.
“Only he that has traveled the road knows where the holes are deep” - Chinese Proverb
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