Between two Entrances of Disney and Universal is Hard Rock Cafe where we arranged our meeting to have a dinner. Hard Rock Cafe became a winner of Certificate of Excellence of 2013 by Trip adviser.
We started with starters. Rock ‘n’ roll opens strong. So does the rock ‘n’ roll restaurant-with mouth-watering appetizers created by hand and made from scratch. The jumbo combo is a sample of the greatest hits. We tried these and many others, food was delicious and not expensive.
Looking around we saw to ourselves the history of Hard Rock Cafe (HRC): it started with an Eric Clapton guitar.
Listen to: Eric Clapton Ramblin’ on My Mind Unplugged Live…
Back in the seventies, Clapton-the original guitar god, creator of the immortal “Layla”-liked to eat at this quirky American diner in London, called the Hard Rock cafe. The place was the funky old building that used to be a Rolls Royce dealership, and it was run by a couple of young Americans two liked to keep it loose. Founded by Isaac Tigrett and Peter Morton, two enterprising and music-loving Americans, Hard Rock Cafe was an instant classic.
So Clapton got to be friends with the proprietors and asked them to sell him a grass plaque or something. The young proprietors said, “Why don’t we put your guitar?” They all had a chuckle, and he handed over a guitar, and they slapped it on the wall.
No one thought much more about it. Until a week later, when another guitarist put a note from Pete Townshend of the who which read: “mine’s as good as his. Love, Pete.” The young proprietors put it on the wall. After that, there were more than 70,000 guitars, drums, pianos, harmonicas, microphones, shirts, pants, scarves, shoes, handwritten lyrics, cars, bikes, a bus and assorted rock memorabilia – by far, the largest, most valuable such collection in the world – on the walls of over 163 Hard Rock Cafes, Hotels, Casinos in 52 countries around the world.
And now we are here. After dinner, we were wandering around the Rock Shop, came to hotel lobby where the doors are decorated with handles in the shape of guitar, made acquaintance with the Lobby Master who appeared to be a bold man with the big wide picturesque beard. It was Gleb’s initiative to take pictures with him who instructed him nicely how to pose and what to do in front of the camera.
It was fun all together to watch those two!