Sunday morning we woke up bright and early and headed off to the Wieliczka Salt Mine. When we got there we noticed that the tour in English cost a lot more than the Polish version of the tour. So naturally we took the Polish tour. It is famous for the ultra deep salt mine that has been in continuous operation for over 700 years. The mine had nine levels the deepest at 327 meters deep. For this tour you can visit the first, second, and third floor ranging from 64 meters to 135 meters underground.
There were lots of big, hand carved statues all made out of
salt. The tour guide even told us
that we could lick the walls if we wanted to check to make sure it was all salt. So we did. Luckily for us Ilona was with and was a trouper and
translated a lot of what the tour guide was talking about.
One chamber of the mine supposedly has health giving
properties the can help cure allergies and asthma. We did our best to breath deep in this chamber.
Then we continued we also saw the Chapel of St Kinga. This is actually a big church. It is 54 meters long 18 meters wide and
12 meters tall. Everything is
carved out of salt, including the chandeliers, altarpieces, staircases, floor and
carvings.
There are several underground lakes in this mine whose water
contains 320 grams of salt per-litre.
This mine was pretty cool but after the two hour tour we
were all salted out. We started
watching the kids on our tour and the poses they chose for pictures and
duplicated them.
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