Every single girl's dream Valentine's Day

I woke up before the sunrise to get ready for a beautiful day in Gibraltar. I am doing an internship with a student travel agency, so in turn for my helping out in organizing and managing the trip, I was going to get to go for free. I was given a t-shirt (definitely made for a five year old) and one task: make sure people have their passports. I performed my duties to the max: I wore my “Discover Sevilla” belly shirt and attacked people as they came towards the bus. After verbally accosting the last little girl as she ran for the bus, one of the program directors pulled me aside. In one of those really low, kind of nervous voices he was like, “Well, um, you see, um, there were actually two, um people, um, that came today, um, that weren’t on the list so, um, there isn’t really space for, um, well, um, you.” I gave him the blank stare. Not the confused blank stare, but more like the, I am going to try and choke back some tears right now blank stare. He did add a nice touch by saying, “Well at least now you can enjoy a good breakfast!”

I walked away, biting my lip and being brave as I went to enjoy a good breakfast. And let me tell you how enjoyable it was sitting alone on the street curb drinking a Venti mocha frappaccino and stuffing my face with a chocolate doughnut. I finally felt that it was o.k. to let the waterworks go and I think I had good reason: Valentine’s day, single, left behind, literally absolutely alone in Sevilla. Luckily for me, the public street cleaning crew of Sevilla is highly trained in handling these types of situations (and luckily they happen to be the only people awake in Spain at 8:30 on a Saturday morning). As I sat there on that street curb, I saw five giant yellow blobs coming towards me. They sat down next to me and started asking me about my day. I think I was able to make out the words, “pobrecita, sola en el dia de Valentine”. His name was Manuel and he gives the best hugs of anyone I know in Sevilla.

After this, I decided to turn my day around. I searched through my phone, all 20 contacts, and finally called up the only person I knew who would be awake at this deathly hour. David had a run earlier that morning. When I got him on the phone, I said, “David, how would you feel about going to Gibraltar today?” He was at my house to pick me up 30 minutes later and we headed to Gibraltar.

It turned out to be one of the best Valentine’s days of my life. Half of the time, I had no idea what was happening or where we were going, I just kind of went with the flow. David knew someone in every town in Spain, so we stopped to visit with everyone. I think that is a big difference between Spain and the U.S., it is perfectly normal just to drop by people’s houses unexpectedly, and even more normal to end up passing the entire afternoon with that person drinking a beer, eating tapas, and going to a kazoo concert. We ended up getting to Gibraltar around 5:30. As we drove up the projecting rock, I was enthralled with the views and made David stop every 5 seconds to take a picture. This was until I saw a sign informing us that the tunnels at the top of the mountain close at 5:45. David put the petal to the metal and we flew up the steepest, windiest one way road I have ever seen. I continued to snap pictures out the car window; unfortunately they were just a little blurrier. We parked and searched around for the entrance to the tunnels. With my luck, a fellow tourist pointed us to the entrance, 400 meters farther up the hill. This is where the marathon training started as we dashed up the hill towards the open doors. As we were about to cross the finish line, I heard the screeching of the giant wooden doors and then they slammed in my face. I began to bang on the doors with all my might (hey, I am a dedicated tourist). The guard poked his head out from the side door to tell me that they were closed (really? That wasn’t obvious?) but I pleaded with him in a sort of high pitched squeaky girl voice, “But I travel all day and just wanna see tunnel and valentine and tunnel and monkey but run and please fast mr. its valentine all I want.” He let us in.

After watching the sunset over the straight of Gibraltar, I decided that no matter how disappointed I had been earlier that morning this was definitely better than any guided tour I could have gotten (unfortunately I forgot to take off my miniature t-shirt).

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Or as they say in Sevilla, when life gives you oranges, MAKE A BLUE MOON!