A salt mine.... no it wasn't punishment.

So we decided to visit Wieliczka. What is that I hear you ask? It is a town only 13km south of Krakow. In this small town they have a salt mine which was one of the first listed UNESCO world heritage sites, along with 11 others. It ran as a salt mine from the 13th Century through to this one and is quite amazing. The Wieliczka salt mine reaches a depth of 327m and is over 300 kms long, surely there is lots to see. On our tour we had to walk almost 3km's of meandering corridors, there were 800 steps to climb of which 350 had to be descended to reach the depth of 135 meters underground. Let's see what we found.

It starts like this. A long way down, for those with bad knees.

halled

manual winch

cauliflower salt, tastes like..... salt

The walls where your guide tells you to lick it to taste it, if it is this shiny it means too many others have... ewwwww

Nicholas Copernicus carved in salt.

Presenting Princess Kinga.

Putting the horses to work.

More salt carvings.

Down deeper.

St Kinga's chapel.

All the adornments are made of salt.

salty bits

The last supper, apparently it was a little salty.

A salt carved gnome

water, the enemy of salt.

Goethe in-salted by being called Gotye.

Joe

A dining room.

The stairs that take you to the elevator that gets you out.

The salt mine is also run as a health spa for people with problem lungs, and COPD as the environment is very stable temperature wise. It sits between 14-16C all the time, year round. Even when it is -30C outside it doesn't vary below. Also it is free of pollution and allergens, while it has micronutrients in the air as well as high humidity. Sounds great to me, when do I move in?