The Salt Mines of Wieliczka
Trip Start
Jun 22, 2008
1
6
10
Trip End
Jul 03, 2008
Wieliczka,
Southern Poland,
Poland
Friday, June 27, 2008
We had an english speaking tour guide for our group, who was kind enough to wait for us as we helped dad along with the stairs and tunnel walks.
Our first suprise was that what we thought would be one flight of stairs down to the elevator lobby to go down into the mines, ended up being about 150 flights of stairs going to the bottom of the mine in what was the equivalent of descending the stairs of a 30 story building from the top to the bottom.
Then, it was almost 2 miles of walking through tunnels and large rooms in cool 57 degree air during the 2 hour tour
Ready to go down in the mines?
. There were more stairs along the way as we worked our way to the very bottom, and after a lunch down at the cafe about 300 ft. down, we took a very small two level elevator back to the top. Dad hung in there, but was worn out by the end of the tour. He even fell, but did not hurt himself, (other than a sore knee later).
The mines have 300 km, (180 miles), of tunnels in all, and I am glad we did not have to walk all of those. We did see some equipment and reinactments of how they got the salt and water out of the mines. The salt was actually dark grey, due to the impurities that were later culled out before selling the salt.
There were several sculptures and statues that were carved out of salt by the miners over a period of time on their off time. You would think that after working all day they would want to get out of the mines, but some were passionate about their work and the mines enough to do their artwork.
