We’ll start my story here, in Bilbao.

Not many people in the US are aware of the big shipping capital located on the Northern coast of Spain. I wasn’t either until my first year of college when I was introduced to Frank Gehry in an architecture class I was taking.

I was mesmerized by one of his works, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, in which he had transformed what appeared to be crumpled up metal into the shape of a ship.

Upon further discovery, I realized that the museum sat on the bank of a river, nestled within the mountains, just a few miles away from the beach and ocean. Right then I was drawn in and decided I would find a way to visit that place some day.

Little did I know that in just a few year’s time I would be living in an apartment around the corner from that amazing structure.