Poland - Part 2

After seeing most of Krakow's major sights the day before, Ross and I had a more leisurely second full day to spend in Poland and having really enjoyed our tour of Auschwitz the day before we decided to take another tour with the same company. This time we visited Krakow's famous Salt Mines - I know sounds a bit silly - but the mine is actually very interesting.

It is located in a smaller village outside of Krakow, so we took all took a bus from the city centre to the mine. Once we arrived, our group was split into two groups - one group was intended to be the faster walkers group, and the other for slower walkers but it didn't really turn out that way. Our group, intended to be the faster walkers, but including some elderly people with canes, were shown the mine by one of its own guides. The other group was led by our tour company's guide and while I am sure his tour was equally interesting our guide was hilarious! He kept making these great jokes throughout the tour (I wish I could remember some of them) as well as being very informative.

A bit about the mine: It was first explored and excavated in the middle ages, consists of nine levels underground and its tunnels cover an area of over 300 kilometers. We walked for over two hours, and saw under 1% of the mine's total area! The tour takes you down an initial 370 odd stairs to level one, and eventually travels down to level three. Along the way we were shown numerous caves, all extremely large, which were at one point filled completely with salt! In some of these caves, there are now sculptures, lakes, and underground cathedrals. Mom, you would have hated this place, deep down underground (at least the tunnels were well lit and not cramped), gnomes in several of the caves, and at the end a freaky metal elevator with two levels each holding nine people tightly fit behind a grated metal door! However going up in the some what questionable elevator was defnitely preferable to climbing back up the hundreds of stairs to the surface. The mine would be nearly impossible to describe to you, especially the massive caves which now have huge cathedrals carved into them, so I will put up some photos and leave the rest to your imagination.

After a day of touring the mine, we strolled the streets of the city for a while, and eventually ate dinner in a great little Indian restaurant which we found on one of the many little streets between the outer ring of the centre and the busy central courtyard.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for Vienna, Berlin and upcoming Paris!
Love Leah and Ross!