Happy day after Valentine's Day

Yesterday Kevin and I celebrated Valentine's Day by going to the Angelicum so I could take my last exam (how romantic!) and then going out to eat at a favorite little Roman spot of ours - (drumroll, please) -

Hard Rock Café.

Seriously. It started last year when our first meal together happened to take place at the Hard Rock Café. It wasn't a date - there were two others there with us - or even a double-date, since Kevin and I weren't yet dating and the other couple had officially broken up with each other. Nevertheless, the four of us were there because it was Thanksgiving Day and the HRC was the one restaurant in Rome that one could hope would have something resembling an American Thanksgiving dinner. (They did, in fact, offer a turkey dinner that night - Kevin and I both had hamburgers.)

Thanks to a long wait for our table on that memorable night, Kevin and I walked down to the Spanish Steps and then up to the Borghese Gardens, talking about divine justice and miscellaneous. He still remembers what I was wearing, better than I do. (I don't have any idea what he was wearing.)

We went to Hard Rock Café again the late-afternoon that we got engaged - 5:30pm, which works out to a very early dinner as far as Rome is concerned, is the ideal time to eat there and avoid the crowds. Kevin picked it in honor of our first meal together there.

And the truth is, as we both freely and thoroughly acknowledge, the Hard Rock Café serves, by far, the best hamburger in Rome. Pasta, as wonderful as it is, and as good as I'm getting at preparing it, is not a hamburger. Furthermore, the more pasta one eats, the better a hamburger every-(not)-so-often sounds.

There are other places in Rome to get hamburgers - McDonald's has taken over Rome just like it's conquered the rest of the world, and at least one of the several-many Irish pubs (which have also taken over the world) serves a decent burger, but they do not compare to the 10-oz. Hard Rock burger. I order one topped with blue cheese; Kevin orders one with a heart attack (cheese, bacon, barbecue sauce).

The music was too loud, the wait was too long, and there were too many people (and a poor guy dressed up in a fuzzy Valentine costume and yellow tights who was doing free balloon puppets for the patrons), but by golly, those hamburgers were wonderful!