santiago de compostela

Kinga Haudek Artista Joyera, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Kinga Haudek Artista Joyera is one of my favorite stores in Santiago de Compostela. This small jewelry shop on rua San Pedro is located in the historic old town. The stone walls and dark wood window frames lend perfect contrast to her organic designs. You can imagine yourself in the same place, making the same purchase 200 years in the past.

When you walk in, you may find Kinga hard at work crafting something new. Everything is crafted by her hand in the store. Her name is the brand, and the moment you meet her you will understand why. Lost in focus, she always looks a little surprised and delighted to see visitors. Her smile will be warm and welcoming when she invites you into the store.

Kinga is Hungarian by birth and Galician by spirit. A brilliant academic, avid adventurer, and an artist by nature. She studied sociology in Hungary, silversmithing at the Mestre Mateo School of Art and Design, and obtained the official Galician Craftsman Certification. Her curious and intelligent nature shines through each piece and gives a brief glimpse of something she saw or felt on one of her many adventures. Kinga is a highly talented artist with designs inspired by elements of the city and the sea.

For photos of her work, I suggest visiting the website. I could not do justice to her creations. Instead, I will document the jewelry making class I attended with my daughter!

Kinga offers classes in her workshop to make some of the more simple pieces. The price of the course includes all of the supplies needed and a half day of instruction. Instruction is limited to groups of 3 people to insure a quality experience for everyone.

Our course began at 10:00 in the morning. She walked us through the process in both Spanish and English. I am not sure how many languages Kinga speaks, but the course is available in English, Spanish, Galician, and Hungarian for sure.

I was admittedly a bit converned when she handed me this little pieces of silver and told me I was expected to turn them into something beautiful on the first try. But hey… I´ll give it a try.

She told us how to properly hammer each piece. We all set to work at our own station. We had a variety of tools at our disposal and a varying weights of hammer.

We would hammer a bit and then heat them before returning to more hammering. I was a little nerrvous to use a torch for the first time, but it was much easier than I anticipated.

I was a bit too timid and struggled to properly align my strikes. Kinga came and lent a hand to put me in the right direction. She helped me to correct the curvature for a more symmetrical pair.

My daughter, on the other hand, was quite adept at this process and managed to complete hammering more quickly than anyone else. This is her gloating.

After a bit of hammering and heat and I was pretty excited to have these to show for my effort!

Once the earrings were shaped, we oxidized them with an acidic sulfur compound and took a short break while they soaked. Next, we learned to craft and solder the earring posts, trim and file the excess, and finally to polish them on her rotary buffer.

The end result was exciting. Each pair was unique even though we all started with identical pieces of silver, similar tools, and used the same methods.

We completed our earrings around 14:00. With a sense of accomplishment and pride in our artistic eneavors, we all posed together for a final class photo and had a little lunch at a restaurant down the street on Rua San Pedro.

I think my favorite part of this was the sense of pride my daughter took away from the activity. She came home and called our family back in the US to tell them what a great job she had done. It was funny listening when she did not know that I could hear her. ¨I was so good at hammering. I finished before everyone else. I was much better at it than Mom.¨

Would highly recommend this activity when visiting Santiago de Compostela. You would need to contact Kinga before planning the adventure to see which classes might be available and which weekends. But definitely something worth doing in Santiago.

Living in Santiago de Compostela, Spain

After living in this beautiful city for more than 2 years, I have decided it is time to start sharing my favorite things in Santiago.

The city has 1000 years of folklore and hidden secrets to uncover. One piece of lore to visit is El Árbol de la Ciencia. Young students come to find their academic fate.

One of my favorite parts of Spain is that they have maintained spaces where small businesses thrive. Santiago de Compostela was largely destroyed in the 10th century and reconstructed over the next 1,000 years. The ancient buildings were never meant to offer space to large warehouse companies and big box stores. Those are sequestered on the far edges of the city.

Instead, the old town in Santiago de Compostela houses smaller privately owned businesses and restaurants. Constant renovations restore the old stone buildings and give them new life while maintaining the most beautiful stone and dark wood features. Most shops have only a few meters space inside and are smaller than the average american garage.

Each shop specializes in only a limited number of items, and often what you find is what you get. When I say that stores specialize, I think it is important to note that there is a store only for slippers. The contents of stores will change from one day to the next, products are discontinued and you will never see them again. And no, you can´t just order online. Some things are available online of course. But do not expect a quick trip to amazon with 2 day delivery. You go to the store, you take what you can find, you go home. The big chain stores are about an hour from my home and I keep a list of things to buy when I go with friends in cars.

I was a bit shocked to discover it is nearly impossible to use Amazon here. And do not expect to use your american card online. Many online stores bill through tax havens like Luxemburg and there is not a way to know which country will present the charge… so you can certainly plan on having your card flagged for fraud every time you attempt an online purchase. Fun times.

If you leave the downtown, through El Parque Alameda or Praza de Galicia, you will walk through Ensanche where there are more of the chain style stores. There is a place called Corte Ingles about 40 minuutes walking from the old town. It is the Spanish equivalent of a Super Walmart or Meijer… but with designer clothes at many times the price. It is a great last resort for things you cannot find in town and it makes a nice stroll on hot or rainy days.

There are a number of beautiful parks and various adventures to have in town. So I am going to begin including these smaller adventures here as well!

Santiago de Compostela, Spain

After Madrid, we flew into the airport at Santiago de Compostela. A friend met us at the airport and took us to his place, where we stayed.

We walked from his place through the Plaza de Galicia to rent a car. We, of course, stopped for cortados and hot chocolate at Café Bar Bendaña on our way to rent the car for our roadtrip. Apparently everything in Santiago is within walking distance, and the car remained parked for everything except a day trip to Castro de Baroña.

We were on our way to meet our friends for lunch. It was raining just a little, and I held us up taking pictures every ten seconds. Much of the city was built around the fifteenth century, and the architecture was like nothing I have ever encountered outside the movies.

We finally met our friends, only a fifteen minutes late despite my best efforts to photograph the entire city. We met at Casa de Xantar O Dezaseis, named after its street number. I ate my first Galician seafood, and it was every bit as good as I was told to expect. Probably one of the best meals I’ve ever had.

After lunch, we walked around a little more through the old town. We found an art exhibition at Igrexa da Universidade.

Someone was pretty excited to come back home.

Three consecutive storms brought record downpours to the city, and we came just in time for the second. Catedral de Santiago de Compostela is quite impressive even in the rain, even if the photos didn’t turn out. Apparently construction began on the site in the early 800s and the small celtic chapel still stands today. In the year 1075, construction began on the cathedral as it stands today.

I visited the cathedral and the ancient Celtic chapel, during the rainiest rain to ever hit Santiago.

By the end of the day we were soaked and maybe a little miserable as the temperature dropped. We had to stop to purchase new shoes for the Tiny Grown Up. I think we succumbed to the weather and napped by 7:30 but woke around 10 for drinks and tapas. We went to my favorite place in Santiago. They had toasted goat cheese and peppers to die for.

The next day was still raining, and we took our wet selves shopping and adventuring. We started the day with brunch at San Jaime named for Santiago which, I have learned is the translation for Saint James. I’m not the sort of person to take photos of food, that is my daughter’s job… BUT…

There was a rainy road trip after brunch, to Castro de Baroña, and we returned to Santiago for more shopping and walking. We found this awesome gift shop called Mononoke that was filled with some very cool local art as well as interesting commercial products. We bought a few prints of the city of Santiago, and a hand made miniature Galician Carnival mask. [You find some information about the celtic origins of the mask here.] Apparently a person who creates the large masks for the traditional celebrations also made miniatures for tourists, and we couldn’t resist.

We had tapas, beer and wine at my favorite place in Santiago, O Filandon. They had a large selection of cheese and carapaccio. They brought free tapas with every round of drinks, but we ordered a vegetarian dish of roasted peppers and goat cheese on a loaf of hard crust bread. It literally melted in your mouth. The place was packed shoulder to shoulder with students, and decorated with the napkin art of visitors from all around the world.

I’m not sure what’s up with them, but these cats are everywhere in Spain.

For our last night in Santiago, we listened to some live music by a cuban band, Alejandro Vargas Trio with Mauricio Caruso at the guitar , at a bar called Borriquita de Belén.

After leaving the band, we toured the city by night. The streets were well lit, and safer than any place I have been in the U.S. Women were walking alone here. The streets were still alive with locals and students out for an evening adventure.