Wieliczka Salt Mine

Wieliczka Salt Mine was a short bus ride out of Krakow and well worth it. The mines are around 700 years old, go down 327 meters and have a little over 2,ooo chambers! Fortunately for me, who was packing Keenan around, we only saw an extremely small portion of that. We did however, have to climb down over 800 steps (they told us, I did not count) and then an elevator brought us back up (thankfully). The mines were filled with beautiful rock salt sculptures, chapels and even a huge cathedral that was carved by the miners themselves. Everything was carved from the rock salt including the crystals on the chandeliers. The mine was active until 1996, the Cathedral holds a church service every Sunday as well as special events such as weddings.

The Cathedral looks plain in this pictures but it was actually quite stunning.



Keenan snoozed through half of the tour, when he woke up he promptly spotted two young girls that any chance he got he ran over to them to show them just how cute he is.
The gnomes of the mine.
A scene depicting the legend of the mine. According to legend, Princess Kinga threw her engagement ring into a salt mine that she received as part of her dowry. The ring traveled to Wieliczka where, behold! It was found in the first block of salt.