Wieliczka Salt Mine and Kalinka Restaurant

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

The Wieliczka Salt Mine is another UNESCO World Heritage Site and was first mined in the middle ages. The mine contains three thousand chambers covering over 300 KM. The highest chambers (where the tour really begins) in the mine are located at about 64 metres below ground or 378 steps down. The deepest chambers are 327 M. Fortunately, we didn't have to walk back up the stairs at the end of the tour.

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Wierzyneck 1364 Krakow, Poland

The visit to Auschwitz was our last stop on the WWII history portion of our trip. I'd wanted to see Nuremberg and the Nazi party rally grounds and the Congress Hall and then Auschwitz. Now it was time to move on  to  the happier portion of our trip and dinner always makes me happy so we set out to find a restaurant.

One of the nice things about Krakow is the great value for your money and even in the old city centre prices were more than reasonable. 

We were walking around the Main Town Square menu browsing when we came across a very nice restaurant called Wierzyneck 1364. It is beautiful. We were seated in the main dining room, which is decorated with sumptuous carpeting, linens, drapes and gorgeous stained glass.

After browsing the menu we decided to have the duck, which is flambed at your table. It is served with apples cooked in honey and a ginger cranberry cake. It was delicious, and quite the showstopper to see it prepared.
For dessert I had a beautiful frozen pear mousse with a dark chocolate sauce. Again, it was delicious.

www.wierzynek.pl

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Model of Wawel Castle Krakow, Poland

 

I've finally got a decent internet connection here in Switzerland so I am going to try to share some of the video clips from the trip. 

Dragon's Den

Went to up the hill to Wawel Castle and took some pictures and video. Originally we had planned to take the indoor tour, but decided to just shoot outside. We came upon something called the Dragon's Den tour at the top of the rampart. It only cost something like 6 zylot, which is about two dollars Canadian per person, so not expensive.

We entered the little booth on the rampart and were presented with a staricase spiraling downward. The stairs seemed to go on forever and after awhile I thought we must be deep in the earth.

Suddenly the stairs ended and we entered a small cave, which opened into a much larger cavern and passageway that eventually brought us out to the river level and the famous firebreathing dragon.

David was scared, so I reassured him and urged him to try getting some video of this legendary beast. At great risk to life and limb, David managed to get some footage of the monster, know as the Wawel Dragon, but mine is better (lol) so here it is....

Like this post? Hate it? Please leave your comment below, all are appreciated!    ~ Mark Daye

Frankfurt Again (or the Night of 1,000 Boys).

We made it back to Frankfurt in time to shower and check out. Now we have to wait until 9 pm tonight to catch the first train on our journey to Poland. It will be a three train trip taking all night and a big chunk of tomorrow.

We arrive in Warsaw around 8 am and our final destination Krakcow around ten. (I think, we need to check our tickets for the exact time). This won't be fun since we haven't slept yet, other than a nap in the hotel lounge earlier.  We are going to stay a day or two and get rested before we travel to Auchwitz.

Ist Stop: Hanover 

I was just advised by my fiance husband to think of something fun to do in a German train station in the middle of the night for two hours, that we won't get arrested for. Hmmmmm......

We are finally on our way to Poland after the Nuremberg/Frankfurt mixup.

Hanover: We arrived after sleeping for the entire two hour train ride. I fell asleep as soon as we started to move. Once in Hanover we had about two and a half hours to wait for our next train to take us to Warsaw.
The train station here is large with a two level shopping complex inside, which was packed with drunken young people.

The ratio was about one girl for every ten boys, and none of them seemed to be over thirty. We did a bit of investigating and saw that there are a few clubs around the station, and I don't think they close until... I have no idea, but fortunately there are lots of police and security people around. They kids are rowdy but seem pretty harmless.

(later) We are waiting on the platform, tired with sore feet from walking around for the past couple of hours. It is 3:00 am local time. We should arrive in Warsaw for 10:00 am and then we have another couple of hours on a different train to get to Krakow. I hope we get some sleep on the way and can get back on a normal schedule after this.