I feel a tad home bound as I head to one of my favorite Spain cities, Santiago de Compostela. It’s one of my top places to travel as I consider it home away from home. It was the first city I lived in during my welcome to Spain trip. Because of it I feel in tune with the temperament of the city and the region of Galicia Spain. This trip is a reunion trip. I get to rejoin the environment where I spent a year teaching English abroad, and learning Spain culture.
I love every bit of this place. The fresh, wet smell of the city, as rain is Santiago de Compostela’s favorite season. The sounds of steady streaming downpours. The thousands of footsteps dodging big puddles, while others are splashing happily in these tiny shallow pools. The unapologetic rain continues its downpour most hours of the day, with short glimpses of sunlight caught in between. It all creates a beautiful atmosphere that produces an abundance of double rainbows to brighten up the gloomy day.
Travel like a local
When visiting Santiago de Compostela in Spain, I realized there are multiple travel benefits to visiting this familiar city. The first benefit is traveling like a local. Revisiting old places and accessing familiar healthy happiness emotions. For me, this was wandering Santiago de Compostela’s vast evergreen natural landscape. It was going on hikes, admiring all the greenery, foliage, and listening to the soothing waterfall noises to enhance my wellness and health.
Connecting with nature has always been one of my favorite forms of wellness travel. This familiar self-care routine created all those fuzzy feel-good emotions because I gently relived those wellness activities and traveled like a local.
Travel like a tourist
The second way to travel is as a tourist, focusing on new experiences and new places. This time my visit was centered around friends, so exploring new places was a great way to reconnect during this reunion with friends. One of my new favorite places we discovered was a hotel near the Santiago de Compostela cathedral. There we enjoyed some warm tea infusions, beer, and tapas (a traditional food in Spain) as we waited out the rain from the fall season. The elegant yet warm atmosphere of the hotel made me feel pampered as I sipped away on my tea. This hotel is a perfect spot for mid day coffee and dessert in the rainy fall season.
After drinks, we took about fifty photos in front of the picturesque cathedral. Although I had taken pictures here before at one my favorite travel places to see, this experience was special because we took pictures from unique angles and viewpoints. Normally I would just stand in front of the cathedral and snap a quick picture. However, all the creative angles combined with our nonstop chatter and laughter created some unforgettable moments and a new experience.
Mix & match between being a local and tourist
Moreover, I realized travel to places that are familiar allows you to easily interchange between being a local or a tourist. This mix and match can happen moment by moment, between activities, or on different days. For the local in me, this was walking around my favorite park. I was able to enjoy one of my favorite overlooks of the city, soaking in the fresh air for my wellness being. There I snapped a couple of photos of the rainbow which perfectly illuminated the blue sky of Santiago de Compostela. The view and company filled me with much happiness in Spain.
An hour later, the tourist in me got to visit a new coffee shop. There I tried a different flavor of a typical European nougat called turron. (It’s a homemade gluten-free dessert made with roasted nuts, typically almonds, honey, and sugar.) I fully enjoyed this travel benefit, with the flexibility of switching between traveling like a local and tourist. It simultaneously allowed me to be fully present with the new and familiarity of this charming city.
Connecting with friends in Santiago de Compostela
Another benefit of travel to familiar places is the reunion of friends. Travel friends are the amazing people you meet while on the road. Reconnecting with those travel friends during your trip can bring so much joy, health and wellness to your soul. It can also bring delightful and heart-warming meetings, creating an awesome friends reunion. It’s truly a blessing to have good travel friends.
Excitement was in the air. Smiles abound as we dove into an a whirlwind of chatter about what’s happened in the past year. Belly laughter and kindness acts seemed to be the normal mantra as we connected over similarities in each of our cultures. Sometimes we would play charades to solve any confusion over differences or things we couldn’t communicate. (Now, I do speak Spanish. But, I don’t understand the Galician language; which is also spoken in this region of the Spain country.) Reconnecting with my friends in Santiago de Compostela felt like no time had passed.
Choose your perspective
The final benefits of travel I found during my visit is you can choose your travel perspective. Returning to a familiar city, I realized I had two choices. Experience the city through my own perspective, or explore it through the perspective of those I was traveling with.
Visiting Santiago de Compostela is always enjoyable for me, but experiencing it with my husband was even more enjoyable. Before, my husband had only a brief interaction with the city. He experienced maybe a day tops from a day trip. Traveling with him, I stepped out of my perspective and into his. It was beautiful. I felt as if I was reliving Santiago de Compostela for the first time all over again. I immersed myself in the magic of this drenched evergreen city. Watching him light up while we stumbled and laughed along the rainy, yet sunlit cobblestone streets lit up my soul.
Ultimately, all of these wonderful benefits of traveling to this familiar place keeps me coming back to this city. The people, the lively rain, exercising contrasting perspectives, and reminiscing of old memories while forging new ones. These all make each overseas adventure travel a uniquely vibrant experience.
Santiago de Compostela, I will be back soon.
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I have a special connection with this city after walking the Camino de Santiago. It’s so nice to get more information on parts I didn’t see.
Love the article! Your photos are also so amazing!