The Initiation

It wasn't until Mechthild and I went to see Beijing in March 2002 until we caught the virus by visiting our first cafe. It was the last evening of our nine-day trip and our tourist guidebook contained a reference to the HRC in the Lufthansa Friendship center. After long days stuffed with Chinese pagodas, temples, palaces, music and food, we decided to do a “western” evening instead and go to the cafe.

Since taxi drivers in China are not (or at that time weren't) familiar with English, I asked the receptionist at our hotel to write down the address to the back of the hotel's card in Chinese letters so that I could show it to the driver. This worked like a charm and we were quickly and safely transported to your destination.

The cafe itself was a pretty new experience. Wide open with friendly staff and all those nice memorabilia items. We were seated and ordered a classic menu, the HRC Cheeseburger with soda. The food was very tasty and the atmosphere was great. The music selection was quite pop-oriented and we'd have preferred a slightly rougher selection. But it was still a great time.

The price was hefty, though. For the two burgers and four glasses of Pepsi, we paid almost 40 US$ (back when the Dollar was valued considerably higher).

Anyway, there had to be a shirt to go along with the experience and I chose the classic white city tee.

The Progression

Unfortunately, there wasn't a HRC in Cape Town anymore, the destination of our next major vacation in June 2002. The cafe had been closed about a year before.

It was more than a year later that we had the next opportunity to go to a Hard Rock Cafe. Metallica had just released “St. Anger” in June 2003 and they were playing their first gigs in several years. Ever since seeing “S&M” and buying the complete back catalog, we were determined to see them live upon the next opportunity. There were two appearances scheduled at the large German festivals “Rock am Ring” and “Rock im Park” and much to our delight, there was also a single headliner concert in Berlin squeezed between both festivals on June 7, 2003.

We got us tickets, booked flights and hotel and were looking forward to a great day. Sometime in May I saw that there was a HRC in Berlin and also learned about their loyalty program called All Access. I registered and hardly could wait for the opportunity to collect points.

We arrived in Berlin early on the day where the concert was taking place. The weather was lovely, sunny and warm, simply perfect for an open-air concert. We planned to go to the HRC for lunch so we had some time to spend and decided to see the local zoo which was also great. It featured our (since the trip to South Africa in the year before) favorite animals, suricates (also known as meerkats).

Then came time for lunch. We quickly located the cafe, were greeted kindly and seated quickly. The food was great again (not as pricey as in Beijing) and the music selection was more appropriate for the “hard rock” name. One noteworthy thing were the number of guests with black clothing and featuring heavy metal band logos and imagery. It seemed like many concert visitors chose to go to the HRC while in Berlin. And to make this a superb experience for this occasion, there was also a guitar signed by Metallica featured as part of the cafe's memorabilia selection.

In the merchandise shop, there was of course another classic white city tee to be purchased and the denim shirt with embroidered logo on the breast pocket was just too good to be ignored. While using the 20$ credit on the All Access card there was another nice surprise: HRC had added a bonus for additional 10$ due to my upcoming birthday.

Overall, a simply superb experience and great way to tune the mood for the great evening to come. The concert at the Wulheide arena was nothing less but awesome!

The Continuation

Having had two great experiences, we were looking forward to visiting the recently opened cafe in Cologne, pretty close to our home town. On August 17, we drove down there and had just another great evening with superb food and nice music.

Of course, another city tee had to go along with the occasion... ;-)

Interestingly, you could purchase two versions of the city tee, one with the classic uppercase lettering of the English city name and one with the local name “Köln” in mixed case and using the umlaut. I chose the international version, though.

The Culmination

The next opportunity to visit a cafe was when we spent the 2004 Easter weekend in Lisbon, Portugal. The HRC there was also recently opened and it was a treat!

The cafe interior was lovely with the typical Portuguese tiles adapted to the hard rock theme and the staff was sooo enthusiastic. Everyone was just bouncing and singing along, being extremely welcoming and attentive. When YMCA was playing on the video screens, the whole staff including the cooks assembled downstairs and did a lively performance. This great experience has not been topped to date.

Of course, yet another city tee...

The Completion I

In order to visit all cafes within normal driving distance, we decided to also go to Amsterdam, Netherlands on October 1, the last day of our late summer vacation that was again spent in South Africa.

We did a classic canal boat cruise in Amsterdam before going to the cafe for some later afternoon lunch. The cafe is much smaller than the building suggests but it has a lovely canal-side terrace and is nice and cozy.

The overall experience wasn't as thrilling as Lisbon, but I guess that is hard to top for a long time (if ever), but everything was perfect again. The music selection was great and included one of our all-time-faves, Metallica's “Nothing Else Matters”.

And -yes- yet another city tee. This time, there was also a nice and plain logo pin to go along with it and Mechthild decided to get herself a backpack.

The Expansion

In 2005, the chosen Easter destination was Barcelona, a city where lovely doesn't seem to even come close in describing the style, class and atmosphere. This must be a great place to live.

The HRC is located right at a large public place so it is fairly easy to find. Unlike the other cafes that we have visited so far, you could walk right in without asking a waitress or waiter to seat you. This meant that the place is permanently crowded and noisy because of all those tourists that walk around, watch the memorabilia and are taking pictures of themselves with certain pieces of memorabilia.

The personnel was quite quick in asking people to leave if they sat at an empty table without being seated by the staff. This cafe was also the first one to date where there were waiting lines. This was a perfect opportunity to use the All Access membership for more than just accumulating reward points but also to use it for first available seating. Apparently, there were some more All Access members waiting before us, but the card still reduced our waiting time from 30 minutes to 15 minutes. Not too bad.

The cafe experience was good and at the –now– expected level.

In the cafe, we noticed ads for the newly introduced limited edition Signature Series shirt inspired by Bruce Springsteen and supporting the World Hunger Year charity. Since The Boss is hardly an artist to be ashamed of and also because of the good cause, this shirt had to go along with the classic white tee. Mechthild still wasn't interested in the shirts, so it was just a keychain for her. Unfortunately, no plain logo pins or denim shirts in Barcelona.

During our stay, we decided to spend another evening there (the first time to visit a cafe more than once) and it was just as nice.

The Return(s)

Back home, I surfed to hardrock.com and noticed the previous Signature Series shirt by Eric Clapton. I ordered it along with two cool beach towels for our next vacation.

Mechthild and I were wondering about whether they had denim shirts in Cologne and were both craving for a nice weekend evening, so we jumped into the car and drove down there.

Again, Cologne featured attentive and welcoming staff, great food and cool music. We tried the chicken salad and finished with the classic Hot Fudge Brownie - a terrific sweet dessert that could well serve as a main course. Try it if you haven't yet!

Sadly, denim clothing seems to be gone for good. But they had logo pins in Cologne and Mechthild got herself an Eric Clapton shirt where there is apparently some old stock remaining.

A week later, we were seeing friends in Cologne and were walking around at the Rhine river and in the old city. It so happened that we were walking along the HRC so we had to slip in again, but this time not for food. Mechthild was giving in to the temptation and got herself a Springsteen shirt as well.

It seems like we will be going to Cologne every now and then in the future. This is really our kind of restaurant and is so much more than your average McDonald's or Burger King. HRC is very dedicated to their primary business, one thing that the merchandise business tends to hide to the occasional passer-by.

The Completion II

On the weekend of June 11/12, we made a trip to Munich to go to the last German cafe missing from our list. So we did it, the first country is completed. Ok, let's ignore just for a second or two the fact that Amsterdam and Lisbon are both the one and only cafe in their respective countries...

The property, previously owned by the copycat company by the name of Planet Hollywood, is located directly opposite of one of Munich's top tourist attractions - the Hofbräuhaus. We intentionally bypassed it and went straight ahead to the cafe in order to enjoy some great food (Twisted Mac and Open Faced Sirloin, both superb!) and music, the latter of which was a bit less poppy but rather harder this time. Cool!

The staff was attentive and kind, as usual. In the merchandise department, Mechthild finally got the umbrella that we first saw in Berlin but for some strange reason didn't get at that time. This was really the first time since then that a cafe offered it. And - of course the classic white city tee, a logo pin and some Pilsner glasses for home use.

The Elegance

On the weekend of July 29-31, we used a special bonus miles discount offer from Lufthansa to spend some days in Paris. We had originally planned to go to London that weekend but the Lufthansa deal came around just one day before the first terrorist attacks in London so we postponed the UK trip to some later date. As if the attacks were not bad enough, the London cafe was struck by a fire on Saturday the 9th and subsequently closed for renovation. We will definitely come to see where it all started, but for the time being fate decided otherwise...

I've never been to Paris before (except for a Microsoft developer conference in the Disneyland Resort), but Mechthild loves it deeply after having been there a couple of times. Now, having been there myself, I can understand her affection for the city. Wherever you look, there's great classical architecture. The Eiffel tower's elegant, fragile looking yet robust steel construction is simply stunning once you're standing next to its huge feet. The prominent churches such as Sacre Coeur and Notre Dame are impressive as much as the Champs Elysses along with its three arcs are still having an aura of the pride and grandness that this former colonial power once had. Paris continues to be a city with character that's not plagued with face- and characterless modern building facades.

The Paris cafe is one of the older ones but it's absolutely fantastic with two large stories and lots of nice memorabilia. Just like Cologne, there's another Clapton guitar in this cafe. The guitarist that started the memorabilia collection of HRC apparently donated a few of his instruments...

The music was great, the waiters were very attentive and kind. We were witnesses of yet another YMCA performance which mostly took place in between two busloads of guests on the upper level.

On the merchandise side of things, it seems like we are spending more and more each time we are visiting a Hard Rock Cafe... a classic white (o'course) and Dragon Slate shirt for me, an Ultra Suede tee for Mechthild. Another survey voucher got us a pin with the Arc de Triomphe on a Flying V guitar and due to some other coupon that we were given by the waiter, we received a gift due to purchasing merchandise for at least $20 - a nice shot glass. On the second evening of our stay we went to the cafe again, this time getting another umbrella from Mechthild's favorite city which was mostly covered by another roll-over of the All Access card. So now the Munich umbrella is mine... ;-)

The "Unfinished"

In September 2005, we were vacationing on Gran Canaria, one of the Spanish islands near the African continent. As it happens to be, there was be a new HRC supposed to open in July, slipping to August and finally to September.

Much to our dismay, the Cafe was still not finished and opened while we were there. On the upside, we were given a tour through the impressive dual-level location with two bars and about 500 in- and outdoor seats. The memorabilia selection is impressive, including items from Annie Lennox, AC/DC, Bon Jovi and Jimi Hendrix.

It will surely be a superb cafe once it opens its doors to the public.

Mechthild's mom visited the island a few months later and got us the merchandise items to complement our "visit": white city tees for both of us plus a city logo pin and lovely lava coast pin, depicting one of the vantage points along the coast road where we stood and took some photos.

#10.1 London Casino (no longer Hard Rock branded)

The Original

On the final  pre-Christmas weekend in December 2005 we've done the postponed (see the Paris entry above) short trip to London to see the original cafe that was established waaay back in 1971.

The cafe was surprisingly small with a crowd waiting to be allowed in. The All Access card helped shorten the wait (at the bar) to about 25 minutes. The lovely decorated property was awesome, just like the very first memorabilia items from 1979 -the guitars from Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend- hanging right above the bar.

The staff was fantastic and so was the food. We truly enjoyed our time there.

The shop is located in a separate property right on the opposite side of the street. As expected, it was a bit larger than those that we've seen before and was offering some unique items.

We settled for a classic white tee, two shirts with a small logo on the chest and a large image of the cafe on the back, a shot glass with the cafe picture and two nice pins. After shopping, we went downstairs to see some particular highlights (e.g. a Flying V guitar from Jimi Hendrix) in the lower floor, the Vault.

Of course, a visit of London wouldn't have been complete without also seeing the local Hard Rock Casino. It wasn't open at the early time of day, but we could get two logo shirts, a pin and two pens in the shop.

If it weren't for the other sightseeing highlights and feeding the cute squirrels in Kensington Gardens, we surely would have come back at a later time to see the casino in action.

The "Classic" One

One of Europe's most impressive cities with regard to archeological remains must be Rome. Wherever you walk something old shows up. The Colosseum, the Forum Romanum, the Trevi Fountain, the Vatican's stunning grandeur... you're breathing history virtually everywhere.

It sure was a place to go. And the Hard Rock Cafe is very cool, too. Very friendly staff, a very fitting design with angels playing guitars in a dome-like room. Cool!

On the merchandise side of things we chose a classic white city tee and a Dragon Slate besides a logo pin, a guitar with the Colosseum as its body and a shot glass.

Craziness!

Our 2006 Easter vacation took us to Madrid, completing Spain on the HRC map.

This city is just awesome - fantastic old and magnificent buildings, wide avenues with wide sidewalks and lots of green in between. Then there is the fabulous Parque del Retiro, a green oasis right in the hectic around it. A superb place for a Hard Rock Cafe. And what a cafe this is. Loud, busy and big. When you first enter, you don't realize its size in various levels. Make sure that you at least have a look at the Skyline Room with NYC hanging upside down from the ceiling (see picture to the left). Incredible!

And the memorabilia isn't bad, either. Original framed prints from the animation sequences of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" movie, guitars from B.B.King, Matchbox Twenty and The Scorpions - just to name a small selection.

Food and staff was impeccable as usual. Merchandise this time: white city tee and black distorted logo tee for me, a burgundy "Live-Love-Rock" tee for Mechthild. And, of course, a city logo pin.

#14 Hard Rock Cafe Niagara Falls USA

#15 Hard Rock Cafe Niagara Falls Canada

#16 Hard Rock Cafe Ottawa

#17 Hard Rock Cafe Montreal (closed)

#18 Hard Rock Cafe Toronto Skydome (closed)

Our main vacation in 2006 took us to Eastern Canada, making an 18-day-trip through parts of Ontario and Quebec, starting out in Toronto, passing Niagara, Ottawa, Tremblant, Québec, Tadussac, Pasbébiac, Rivière-du-Loup, Rimouski, Percé, Montréal and other nice towns along the way.

Canada is a lovely country with tremendous nature and extremely kind people. We enjoyed our trip thoroughly. Being in a remote place without cell phone coverage, seeing stunning landscape and enjoying the silence was an outstanding way to celebrate my 40th birthday.

Fortunately but still coincidental, our travel itinerary allowed us to visit all five Canadian Hard Rock Cafes and to take advantage of the opportunity to quickly jump the border into the USA to check out the other Niagara Falls property as well.

On the first evening of our vacation we just had to walk from our hotel down the road a few blocks to have dinner in the downtown Toronto cafe. This was particularly cool because it is actually the second property opened after the London cafe had been in operation for 8 years.

The cafe is styled in a quite modern theme, has indoor and outdoor seating areas and has the familiar kind staff and good food.

Merchandise taken home included a logo pin, an "Ambassador of Rock" keychain and two cool Lyric Sand shirts. City tees were unfortunately currently not available as they were awaiting delivery of shirts featuring the new logo.

On the second day, we drove down to Niagara Falls to see one of the world's most impressive nature highlights. Our expectations were fulfilled and exceeded. The sheer force of the water, the deafening sound and the permanent spray of water were stunning. We also took a fascinating scenic view from above the Skylon Tower.

Then we went to the Canadian cafe. We got ourselves a nice Maple Leaf guitar pin, an interesting pin depicting the falls comprising part of a puzzle to be combined with the respective counterpart from the USA cafe.

Sadly, there were no logo pins available, breaking the string of logo pins that my collection completed via eBay featured. We took a city tee (with a Maple Leaf between the words Niagara and Falls) and a special shirt with the cafe logo on a prominent Maple Leaf.

Then we left for the border...

The USA cafe is virtually within waving distance, just about 600 Meters. The Rainbow Bridge spanning the river allows for easy border crossing (50 Cent bridge fee applies, payable with both US and Canadian coins).

We decided to leave our car parked on Canadian soil and just cross with a backpack. After the few usual questions being asked by the border officials and paying US$ 6 border fees per person (credit card works, so no need to change currencies) we were setting our feet onto the United States of America.

The falls may seem more impressive from the Canadian side with all falls in one panoramic view. But the falls also have a serious appeal from the US side where you get very close to the point of the water falling down.

Instead of a lunch we just sat for desserts and fetched the obligatory merchandise before returning to Canada. We brought home a logo pin, the other part of the puzzle pin set and two city tees.

The next stop on our journey after spending a second night in Toronto was Ottawa. We took some walks and resting in the Parliament Hill area and the nearby Mayor's Park. At dinner time, we had an obvious place to go.

The cafe has a pretty large patio dining area and the pretty weather allowed for a nice time. Instead of two full meals, we shared the Jumbo Combo which is perfectly sized for two hungry adults.

We got ourselves another logo pin, a city tee and two ballpoint pens there.

After passing through Tremblant, Québec, Tadoussac, Rimouski, Pasbébiac, Perce and Rivière-du-Loup, we arrived in Montréal on day 16 of the trip. The cafe in this strongly Europe-influenced town is very classic in terms of being close to the style of the London cafe. The waiters, merchandise staff and shift manager all were very open and kind. This made us return for another dinner on our second day in the city.

We got ourselves a logo pin, a 2005 AIDS Day ribbon guitar pin, a Maple Leaf guitar pin, a city tee and a  Live-Love-Rock shirt there.

With leaving Montréal it was time for returning to Toronto in order to wrap up our trip and return home. Upon arriving in Toronto after a lengthy 600 kilometer leg we headed towards the CN Tower and Skydome for dinner in the second HRC in town. This property is quite unique since it is located right within the Skydome stadium (now named the Rogers Centre) with one of the walls being replaced with windows, allowing to see right down onto the playing field.

Of course, we didn't leave the final cafe of our tour without getting some more memorable merchandise. We were quite surprised to see that most items didn't have property specific naming on them, but rather only a generic "Toronto". This, however, allowed for getting the city tee that was not available in the downtown cafe two weeks earlier. Mechthild even got herself one old stock shirt with the old logo and the property name "Skydome, Toronto" on it.

Unfortunately, there was no logo pin with the Skydome name. So we chose a 17th anniversary pin depicting the stadium as the guitar body.

This was a trip that will long be remembered by us, not only because of the series of cafes. Canada is a super lovely country that seems to be a great place to live and work in...

#20 Hard Rock Cafe Las Vegas
#20.1 Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Las Vegas

#21 Hard Rock Cafe San Diego
#21.1 Hard Rock Hotel San Diego

#22 Hard Rock Cafe La Jolla (closed)

#23 Hard Rock Cafe Hollywood (Los Angeles)

Our main vacation in 2008 was originally planned for visiting three of the Hawaiian islands but for some reasons ended up taking us through the continental USAs West Coast region in the first half of April. The fantastic tour took us to San Francisco, Yosemite, Death Valley, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Palm Springs, San Diego, Los Angeles and Monterey.

It's pretty stunning to see so dramatically different cities and natural surroundings in such a brief time. We were lucky to have five cafes, two hotels and one casino along this trip. Since the tour came as a tour operator organized package, we didn't stay at the Hard Rock Hotels. I am sparing you the detailed list of memorabilia purchased on this tour, but it was a quite long list...

The San Francisco cafe was moved to the popular tourist attraction Pier 39 a few years ago and despite the artificial themepark-like surrounding it was still a neat property with a great shop where we were greeted with a large variety of new merchandise.

San Francisco is a lovely and pretty unique city with its roads going up- and downhill, historic cable and street cars and its mixture of old and new buildings. Putting our feet on so many historic landmarks so commonly seen in movies and on TV was quite strange. Walking the Golden Gate Bridge alone is quite an experience.

After seeing a pretty different kind of untouched nature in the Yosemite and Death Valley national parks, Las Vegas was the exact opposite. It felt like a huge kind of Disney theme park with everything having a dramatically artificial flavor. But being there on an often-seen location was again some kind of experience. We also still liked some things such as the Bellagio's awesome musical fountain where we stayed to watch six shows.

One night of our stay was of course committed to the local cafe and hotel/casino. Apparently, the Hard Rock Cafe is going to be relocated from its remote location right to the Las Vegas Strip later this year. The new property will be multi-level and several times the size of the current cafe which we liked much because of its unanticipated small size. After dinner we went to take a look at the local Hard Rock Hotel/Casino as well. Unfortunately, they didn't have any nice casino branded merchandise for sale.

Having a second night in Las Vegas gave us the opportunity to go to the House of Blues in Sin City, another restaurant venture of HRC co-founder Isaac Tigrett along with Dan "Elwood" Aykroyd that's not available internationally. The southern-inspired cuisine was awesome as well and well worth a visit.

After the artificial environment of Las Vegas, the next stop was another dramatic change - the breath-taking Grand Canyon. We're admittedly rather not mountain-type folks, but that stunning view from above compares to nothing else.

Then, we headed for California's coastline again, stopping over in Palm Springs for one night before hitting beautiful San Diego. San Diego is our favorite city of the tour and will pretty certainly see us again. The Gaslamp District in downtown is a nicely restored area of historic buildings, mixing nicely with a great skyscraper skyline.

After getting a late breakfast in the downtown cafe, we walked downtown to the recently opened Hard Rock Hotel (man, what a place to be!) and then headed for the Ocean Beach and La Jolla communities, the latter of which hosts the original San Diego HRC.

La Jolla well deserves its Spanish name, labelling it as "the jewel". It's one of the most beautiful seaside areas that we've seen so far. The cafe is showing its age, but still is a neat property. We were saddened to learn that it is about to be closed at the end of 2008. Due to this fact, there was no location-specific merchandise (all stuff was carrying the San Diego branding) available except for some left-over glassware.

After San Diego, the route went to Los Angeles. We intended to dine at the local cafe and then hit one of the beaches, but the insanely crowded highways just had us go to the cafe and head back to the hotel to relax for the next day's long ride.

The Los Angeles cafe is named Hollywood, likely a distinction leftover from the time when there were two cafes operating in the city. The remaining property is located right within the Universal Studios Citywalk, the theme-park entry area. If we had had more time in LA, we probably would have visited the Universal Studios - for example, seeing Wisteria Lane from ABC's Desperate Housewives would have been quite cool - but that lost opportunity wasn't too dramatic.

From Los Angeles we drove the coastal California Highway 1 all the way up to Montery, witnessing some lovely views of the Pacific Ocean and spending a very beautiful beach sunset on the final evening of this tour. We enjoyed the trip very much and look forward to exploring other areas of the USA in the future.

It's been quite some time now since adding the last European HRC to our list (Madrid - over three years ago, whew...), so it was about time to take another short trip in June 2009.

Initially we had planned to go to Copenhagen, but unfortunately there were only business class seats available for frequent flier miles. After some decision making and recommendations from friends we finally settled for Dublin. Both Mechthild and I have never before been to Ireland, so why not go see its capital.

It's indeed a lovely city, both nicely aged and modern with friendly people. We strongly recommend visiting it.

The Hard Rock Cafe is fairly large on two levels, dominated by its U2 cool memorabilia (love the colorful Trabi over the stairs) and happens to be pretty packed at times. So remember to take your All Access card!

This franchise operated HRC still offered the old menu, so we make use of the great opportunity to have some classic favorites such as the Cesar Salad and the Tom Perry Quesadilla.

Merchandise-wise it was a success, too... two city tees, two Pilsner glasses (easier to take home when you only have carry-on baggage), a logo pin and a fridge magnet will make us memorize this great trip for a long time.

Well, purely by coincidence there was another Wuhlheide concert worth visiting from several hundred kilometers away and the new Berlin cafe just having openined its doors after moving from the original location. Basically, it has just moved up from within the side street right to the front of the Kurfürstendamm.

Unfortunately, though, the property's interior follows the new "lounge style" used in all newer cafes, meaning almost no memorabila and cool, modern type of furniture. I don't particularly like that because it takes away the fascination of unique pieces owned by popular artists hanging right above your head.

Apart from that the dual-level property is nice and now in a prime location that should ensure a steady inflow of customers.

The food and service was impeccable, memorabilia was skipped due to already having Berlin stuff.

Our very first trip to the -for German vacationers- massively popular Spanish island of Mallorca coincided with the fact that a new cafe has been opened at the end of 2008.

The island itself is really lovely, as long as you make sure to avoid the major tourist traps hotspots like S'Arenal.

The cafe is located in the island's capital, Palma de Mallorca, facing the marina not far from the cathedral. It is fortunately one of those old style properties stuffed with memorabilia.

Although the shop offers only a somewhat limited selection, we left with shirts, a pin and 40th anniversary souvenir glasses.

#27 Hard Rock Cafe Washington D.C.

#29 Hard Rock Cafe Philadelphia

#31 Hard Rock Cafe Yankee Stadium (New York)

#33 Hard Rock Cafe Boston

Our big vacation in 2011 ended up as a trip through four major cities of the US East Coast along with a total of eight HRCs in no less than 10 days. We started in Washington D.C., going to Philadelphia and New York on our way towards Boston. More or less along the route lay Baltimore and Atlantic City.

When our first day in Washington D.C. turned out to be pretty wet, we decided to make a short excursion to Baltimore where we visited our first cafe on this trip. The cafe is located in the rejuvenated harbor district inside a former plant building. The conversion was beautifully done and the whole cafe is a very nice property. The folks at the HRC were also extremely kind an the food was impeccable as usual.

Washington's own cafe was therefore pushed back to the second night of the tour. This dual-level property reminded us of some of the particularly nice cafes like Montreal. We spent a great time there.

Next up on the list was Atlantic City on the way to Philadelphia. Not having liked Las Vegas much, our expectations for Atlantic City itself weren't too high. Indeed, the city looks a bit dated. As long as you don't ever leave the casinos, you may not even notice the wear and tear. The cafe is located within the Trump Taj Mahal, a pompous and -in our opinion- tastelessly designed Casino resort building. It has an entry from and patio on the famous boardwalk, but the view is not the nicest. The cafe is nice in the sense that it has lots of memorabilia, but is otherwise no property to get too excited over.

The next day in Philly was "soaking wet" rainy. We barely made it to some of the noteworthy sights before being wet down to our bones. Therefore, we decided to call it a day after going to the Rock Shop and dine in the hotel while we tried to dry our clothes with the help of the air condition (providing a room temperature of about 28° C). The cafe looked like a nother very nive one. Too bad that it rained cats and dogs all day and we couldn't risk to get more clothes completely wet.

After Philly, our tour continued in New York City. This is some truly remarkable city and the three days that we had this time are definitely not sufficient to explore it fully. We'll sure come back sooner or later. The moved cafe is now in a former movie theater which was turned into a cafe in an awesome manner. It's very busy, but still has some quieter corners. If anywhere, don't ever forget to bring your All Access card to this cafe if you wish to dine. The waiting lines are otherwise insane! Great food, nice people.

Not too long ago, New York got a second cafe in the New York Yankees stadium. It's more like a sports bar rather a normal HRC and sadly it doesn't offer playing field view like the Toronto Skydome cafe. But during games it sure is a cool place to be - assuming you like baseball... ;-)

More or less on the way from NYC to our final city, Boston, is the Hard Rock Cafe in the Foxwoods casino resort. As mentioned before, we don't really care much for gambling. But the cafe here is well worth a visit as it was built with some true love. The walls are packed with memorqabilia and the high hall is quite unique. Well worth a short trip if you're nearby.

And finally, we made it to Boston. This cafe is somewhat shocking from the outside. It actually resides in the basement of a parking lot near the popular Faneuil Hall. However, once you enter the cafe, you'll notice a nice property with a beautiful bar backed with a wall consisting of hundreds of cymbals.

Maybe it should be noted that we spent a lot of time on sightseeing. This trip wasn't just about only visiting HRCs. But as I'm writing this about 30 hours after waking up last (in Boston), I'd rather keep it short for now. This was a very nice and interesting vacation which coincidentally happened to feature so many cafes along the way.

Since our collection of shirts has already grown quite big over the past years, we settled for only one tee each and one pin per cafe to add to our collection.