So, after having about three crappy hours of sleep the night of the concert, I was up before 7:00 am the next day. I'd been tossing and turning so much, I just gave up. Meanwhile, my sister was snoring away for another hour and a half. I was ready for the day by the time she got up. I ate my leftover breakfast burrito from the night before while she got herself ready. We stopped off at Dunkin Donuts and then we were off to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which was only about a mile away from the hotel.
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| Here I am in front of the Long Live Rock sign. It was really tough to get the whole thing in the picture. |
We spent a little over three hours at the Hall of Fame. It has six floors and is packed with memorabilia spanning decades. They even had a display dating back to the 1880s that contained one of the first Victrola phonographs. Many people say that it takes all day to see everything, but I think it depends on whether you look at every single item and read all the descriptions, or if you just look at certain things more closely while skimming over others. That's what we did. Some things were more interesting than others. For example, I was much more interested in the 1980s and beyond since I was born in 1974, whereas someone who's older might prefer the previous decades. They had pretty much any kind of memorabilia you could think of: sheet music, lyric notebooks hand-written by the artists themselves, clothing (some very hideous clothing--I don't know what musicians are thinking when they pick out these outfits...), props used in videos, photos, etc.
The ground floor was definitely the biggest. The exhibits started at the very beginning, The Roots of Rock, which covers blues, gospel, R&B, country, bluegrass and folk. There was a room for Elvis Presley, the 1960s "summer of love", the Beatles, heavy metal, etc. On other floors you can find the history of music videos,the start of MTV (yes, it was ALL music at one time!), listening booths, short movies about music, instruments, and lots of other stuff. I really enjoyed the music videos, as a lot of them were a blast from the past for me, like Metallica's Enter Sandman. They also had a montage of past induction ceremonies, which featured, among others, Prince and Tom Petty playing While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Although I'm not a Prince fan, his guitar solo is absolutely amazing. You can see it here on You Tube. And here's a listing of all the exhibits by floor. Here are just a few of the pictures I took.
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| This was Elvis' double guitar. Elvis had a whole room dedicated to him. |
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| Lots of great bands featured here, like AC/DC, Judas Priest, and Dio. Angus Young's outfit. What AC/DC fan wouldn't recognize that?! There's also the lyrics to "Highway to Hell." |
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| Metallica! Recognize the scales of Justice? |
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| Rob Halford's jacket (Judas Priest). Sheet music for "Holy Diver" by Dio in the top left corner. Lyrics to "Judas is Rising" on the right. |
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| Rob Zombie's jacket. |
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| Guess who I voted for?? |
I bought only one souvenir at the gift shop: a wooden spoon that looks like a drum stick. There were actually two in the package, but I gave one to my sister since she doesn't own a wooden spoon. (Who doesn't own a wooden spoon??)
After the Hall of Fame we went back to the hotel to relax for a bit. We were hoping to find a good Lifetime movie, but no luck. Then we decided to walk around Public Square for a bit. The Public Square area is pretty cool because you can pretty much get everything you need--food, shopping, gaming, banking, movies and other things--and traverse several streets without having to go outside. Plus there are some nice sights outside within the Square itself. We ventured outside into the heat just to see what's around. Below is the Soldier's and Sailors Monument. It's beautiful and pictures don't do it justice.
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| Wonder who this is?? |
Here's the inside of our hotel, another old building. The lobby was beautiful and the staff friendly, but the rooms were definitely a lot smaller than what we're used to.
After walking around Public Square for a bit, we decided to head to the casino again. But not before I made a pit stop at Bath & Body Works to grab some smelly hand soap. They were closing at 7:00 pm so I had only 10 minutes to shop, which was probably a good thing. I could have done a lot more damage, as soaps were buy three get three free. We only spent about an hour and a half at the casino before deciding to grab some dinner to bring back to the room. We then ate and crashed by 10:00 pm.
And then it was time to head home. We left Cleveland around 9:00 am. On the way home we stopped at the beautiful Chautauqua Lake rest area in NY. It was so breezy and the birds were hopping around. My sister left some doughnut crumbs for them to eat. As soon as we got in the car they started swooping in to grab some crumbs. We continued on and got to my sister's house around 3:00 pm. I took a little break and then drove the rest of the way home. It was a very long day and I wasn't sure I wanted to drive home the same day, but I had a lot of things I had to do before going back to work. I'm glad I did, because I barely had time to relax even though I basically got a bonus day by doing it all in one day. I'll admit, my back was in agony the next day and I was really tired, but I was better the following day.
My vacation flew by way too fast, but I had a great time: I got to see my favorite band from the front row and meet them; didn't lose a bunch of money at the casino; got to visit somewhere I'd never been before; visit the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and spend quality time with my sister. And she got to meet her man after 35 years! That by itself was worth it. (She was a little teary-eyed after meeting him...but then giggled randomly the rest of that night. LOL)
I'm thinking my next vacation will be a staycation. I might actually relax!
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