Tag Archives: Krakow

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, It’s Off to Working in the Salt Mines

20 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by in Things to See and Do

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The best thing about a TBT (Throw Back Thursday) post is that I am writing this in Poland and most of my readers are in the USA…which is 6 hours behind in time…so I have extra time to get my thoughts together.

Last week I recounted our adventures driving to Krakow.  One of the biggest tourist attractions is the Wieliczka Salt Mine, which is visited by more than a million tourists each year!  The mine was built in the 13th century and produced table salt continually until 2007 and is one of the oldest working mines in the world.

The first part of the tour (once you’ve gotten your tickets and stood in the “English” tour line) is to descend into the mine….by stairs….wooden stairs….wooden stairs that wind down a shaft….260 stairs to be exact.  (It was a physical therapy workout!).  Once you were down those steps….you entered into a mine full of passageways and tunnels that lead you deeper down into the mine (and yes, there are more stairs…178 more!).  The tour is a 1.9 mile journey….but you only see 2% of the mine!  So you can imagine how HUGE this mine is. Continue reading →

TBT – The Drive to Krakow

05 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by in Everyday Life, Things to See and Do

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It’s TBT!  (Throw Back Thursday) Well, I’m not throwing back very far…only to the week-end of August 14-16.  David and I went to Krakow that week-end…our first week-end trip.  There’s soooo much to see and do there that we drove instead of taking the train so we could have a little extra time for sight-seeing.  But it didn’t really work out quite that way.  What our Google Maps and Waze apps said was a 5 1/2 hour drive actually took 9 hours!  First the oil light came on and we had to stop and put oil in the car.  David,  being a good former Boy Scout, was prepared and had a bottle of oil in the car.  But he didn’t count on forgetting that his cell phone was in his lap when he got out of the car.  It fell onto the cobblestone pavement and shattered the screen.  A few choice words that I have never heard David say before in the 37 years we have been married just might have slipped out.  But it was still working! (yeah!).

So now we’re driving along admiring the countryside (and the weird things on the side of the road, like this tank)…IMG_4527 when a strange noise starts coming from the car when we hit little bumps in the road.  Continue reading →