Until I get back to writing new blog entries again in a few weeks, I share with you some photos of the beautiful, rainy, melancholy, rainy, soulful, rainy—did I mention rainy?—city of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. A place that appears lifted straight out of a fable, shrouded in mist and low-hanging fog, its pervasive stone often glistening with rain.

Despite the frequent precipitation, or probably because of it, Santiago is a city with a palpabla aura, a place filled with hidden nooks, covered archways, and winding, narrow streets. It’s not hard to picture it populated by a cast of medieval characters straight out of Chaucer, lurking in the shadows…