Thanksgiving in Rome

I must say that holidays that are only celebrated in the US such as Thanksgiving are tough when you aren't in the US and not in a country with a lot of American expats! The 4th of July was my 1st holiday like that...but I guess since Thanksgiving has even more traditions I missed it a little more. Halloween isn't really celebrated here much (the small kids dress up & you will see some costumes in stores, etc.), but 1) I've never been really into Halloween & can't even remember the last time I dressed up on Halloween & 2) Nov. 1st is All Saints' Day, which is an Italian holiday and everyone gets it off...so to me that's better than Halloween! But going to work on Thanksgiving day just felt wrong - I haven't had to go to school/work on Thanksgiving my whole life...until this year!

At least for Thanksgiving this year I had a friend from Houston staying with me for a little over a week, so I had another American around to 'celebrate' the holiday with. Since I'm not much of a cook & had to work on Thanksgiving...making a homemade Thanksgiving meal was out of the question! I tried to find a Thanksgiving dinner for us to go to, but the only one I found was way too expensive. So then someone from work suggested going to Hard Rock...at least that's American food. BUT when we were waiting for the bus to go to Hard Rock (around 8pm), I called to make a reservation & they said they weren't taking reservations any more for the night & the wait was almost 2 hours! So we dropped that plan. The only other place I could think of that served at least semi-American food was this bar down the street from me called the Bulldog Inn. So my friend & I headed there, scanned the menu & determined that cheeseburgers were as American as we could get. So there we sat Thanksgiving day, on small bar stools in a bar (American style bar, not Italian) in Rome, eating our cheeseburgers in celebration of Thanksgiving! (I figure it's the only time I can justify passing up the pizza & pasta for a cheeseburger anyway.) It wasn't a traditional Thanksgiving meal, but good just the same. I did get a turkey fillet at an Italian restaurant the next evening - so at least I got a fix for that craving. I'm still craving some green bean casserole, sweet potatoes with cinnamon & pecans, dressing, and some pie! Don't think I'll find all that here though....so guess I better learn to bake all that myself!