Novotel Hotel Krakow Bronowice

... the underground church made entirely of salt; this is a pretty popular Kraków destination so perhaps you are familiar with it. Again, do not pay the photo-taking fee, as nobody checks to see whether you are officially registered to take photos or not. Later that evening, back in a park very near the old part of Kraków, we ran into a few young drunk Poles who cursed at us in English after hearing us speak English and told us to go home. We headed south ...

... of these camps. Day Three More wandering, and we did an afternoon trip to the salt mines. They are amazing with all the carvings in them, mind you be prepared for a lot of going down steps especially at the beginning. The cathedral in the salt mines is massive, hard to believe you are so far below the surface.

... can you believe that!@!! CAN YOU It hurt so bad and even now I am crying so hard because these people believed in US and in everything and they TRUSTED adn everything was taken from them- and everything in hose warehouses were belongings fro peopel wyho arrived before them and were gassed and were then taken to the cremation chamber adn who noone cared about and who noone looked in these peoples eyes... I crided when I heard CANADA and realized what it meant to epople ...

... which is the largest. The sun has been shinning all week, so its been footy shorts and a tshirts . you can walk everywhere, and after 5 days of being here, i think i know my way around pretty well. With toms eye and spirits a little down, we didnt hit the town for a party until we were four days in. But you dont drink though your eye, unless your really ******. So dinner and a night club was what we needed. It was an opportunity to have some fun, and ...

... was funny and lively. She did a very good job of telling us about the rooms, artifacts, and history. I really liked seeing the older rooms, particularly the library that is now used as a meeting room; the refectory (with a very ornate twisting stairway); and the treasury of historical Polish artifacts, including the oldest globe, that locates America next to Madagascar. The final room, the Aula, is a grand hall filled with paintings of important university folk and a very ...

... a historical area but was not as great as I had expected. After my exhausting walk I rushed back to Krakow to get to the City Hall Tower before they closed. My Lonely Planet book said they closed at 2 so I thought I was fine when I arrived at 1:40pm but was told the last people allowed to go up were at 1:30. Oh come on! I showed the woman my guidebook and explained that I had planned my schedule according to it. They were open later in the day but that wouldn´t work since I would ...

... and then to Oswiecim. In Wieliczka I was only for the salt mine. Ania had said it wasn't that interesting, but for me it was quite impressive. Many rooms carved out of rock salt, with a lot of salt sculptures scattered around. And then the St. Kinga's chapel, a huge chamber with a lot of amazingly beautiful salt sculptures, including even a copy of the Last Supper painting! In Oswiecim (a.k.a. Auschwitz) my goal was to visit the concentration camp, but somehow I missed it. I got ...

... home and doing some internetting, we managed to make it to Wieliczka Salt Mine, about 15km from Krakow. We had been told about the mine years ago by a friend of a friend, mostly regarding the heavy accents and unintentionally hilarious commentary of the tour guides, so we were quite excited to go there. The mine has been in operation for over 700 years and is much more interesting than you would think. Marnie managed to pull a swifty, so ...

... doing it, but they pointed it out. Linda wrote me a beautiful description of our visit, and I want to include some of it: "Sokal - the entry across the River and seeing the adaptive reuse of a once Polish monastery to its current function as a Ukrainian prison, wondering about the Polish Castle Tower - origin 1930s - construction abandoned w/ onslaught of WW 2, seeing School No 3 and YOUR personalized Hotel Liza ! It felt like home immediately ...

... a mini-bus to the Salt mine in Wieliczka on Saturday. It was kind of like an oversized van with about 5 rows of seats in it. It got really crowded along the way - people even filled the tiny aisle and they kept on packing them in! We met a guy from Wichita, Kansa who was studying at a school in Germany and was visiting with a Polish friend from Warsaw. It was fun to meet someone who was from Poland and we inherited a tour guide for most of the afternoon! In the salt ...