Saturday, May 8, 2010

Day 5 - The Wieliczka Salt Mine

The outdoor concert I saw nearby the market square in Krakow. The singers were quite good!
The absolutely delicious chocolate ice cream I had at Wedel...ugh SOOOOOO GOOD (and light at the same time)!
One of the interior decorations in the Polish restaurant we ate at, Chlopskie jadlo.
The sickeningly huge platter that we all ate from of peasant-like Polish food. Can you feel your veins clogging? I sure can...and the food was terrific!
My chicken and dumpling soup...It actually tasted like a more "chickeny" flavored wan tan soup from a Chinese restaurant. Yum!
This is bread with Polish cottage cheese...yes, cottage cheese.
Bread with lard and potatoes...looks sick but tastes terrific.
This is the saint of the salt mines...Unfortunately I didn't catch her name. Because of her, Poland has the salt mines.
Crystallized salt
Steps going down in the salt mines. If you look at the bottom left corner, that squiggly looking block of salt is actually the remnants of stairs that salt miners used in the 17th century to transport salt.
A beautiful carving of the Virgin Mary in the mines.
The sign to our restaurant
One of the chapels found in the salt mines
This is a GIGANTIC chapel found in the mines...can you believe this is made entirely from carved salt?! Yes, including the chandeliers.
The sign outside of the salt mines
The outside of the salt mine
Just thought I'd leave you guys a smile!!! Love you!


Well, I have finished yet another day and I am missing everyone terribly!

We had the opportunity to go to the salt mines and though it sounds incredibly boring, there was actually a lot of interesting and beautiful things that I had the chance to see. Despite the high humidity (somewhere between 70 and 80%) the mines were cool because we were pretty far underground. I think we had to go down about 45 lights of stairs until we finally got to our destination. Even then, throughout the tour we had to descend further to see the rest of the mine. I had the opportunity to see different salt carvings, a HUGE cathedral carved from salt, and got to see the process of how the salt was mined in earlier centuries. We also had the chance to see a museum toward the bottom of the mine where different types of salt crystallized. All in all the sight was quite overwhelming because it was nature's beauty at its finest. I've never experienced anything like it in my life.

Following the mines, I ended up going back to the hotel and taking some time to rest. Met with the group around 5:30 and we went to a fantastic Polish restaurant called Chlopskie jadlo which is more in the peasant style. Although the mountain of food did look a little sick, it turned out to be soooooo good! I think with all the Polish food I've been exposed to, there really isn't anything that I don't like (*knock on wood)...I've even got a couple people addicted to the beetroot soup! I really wish you all were here to try it, too! Everyone seemed to have a good time and we got along fine.

I had a chance to walk around the market square with Desiree for a bit and heard a wonderful outdoor concert (the Polish language is really quite beautiful) and ate at the best chocolate shop named Wedel. It definitely beats chocolate at home any day of the week...the lightness of the chocolate and European sweets in general is very refreshing and honestly a lot tastier. We ended up getting a little lost on the way back, but hey...we made it back! Considering it's a Saturday, the market square was extremely lively and populated with a ton of college-age students. The clubs and bars were pretty active...but I suppose that's to be expected considering that Jagiellonian University isn't too far away.

Other than that, I'm probably going to call it a night here in a little bit. Hope you all are enjoying the posts. I'm thinking of you guys and I love you very much!

No comments:

Post a Comment