Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

This is probably Gehry's absolute masterpiece and I guess we'll never see it.  We came close as we almost did a house/car exchange with a colleague of Jim's in Madrid just after it was completed although they did ask us not to take their car there as cars with Madrid licence plates were prone to be blown up by the Basques.  We would have taken the train.

Bilbao was the first place in Spain we visited.  In 1972 on our first trip to Europe we weren't planning on going to Spain but we were in Biarritz and thought why not so we ended up driving all the way across Spain to Barcelona.

Now,  this little story tells you something about Spain at that time.  We didn't speak Spanish so had difficulty asking where to get a room for the night.  Jim got the idea of stopping a priest walking by thinking he probably spoke French or English since priests are educated.  He spoke French and came with us to a small hotel in the area he was familiar with.  Even though he was with us and our passports had the name "Sexton",  they were concerned that we were actually married.  The priest assured him we were so we were given the room.

Around the same time,  a couple we knew were travelling in France and weren't married and were asking for separate rooms.  They had great difficulty explaining that they actually wanted "deux chambres" not "une chambre pour deux".   The French just couldn't quite get their heads around a young couple wanting two rooms!

So,  in 1972,  the Algerians were blowing up things in France and the IRA was blowing up things in the UK.   But we must get hope from such wonderful things being created like this museum!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Museum_Bilba