Salt Mine! Yes, it really was exciting enough to merit an *!*

On our last full day as a group in Krakow, we visited a salt mine right outside of the city. I had no idea that salt mines could be so incredible. Brad and I watched a Rick Steves episode about Krakow before we went, so we'd seen a few snippets of the salt mine and were really excited to visit it. It's called Kopalnia Soli Wieliczka, and if you find yourself in Krakow, you should absolutely go! Also, I'll just go ahead and say that almost all of the pictures were taken by Piotr. You had to pay to take pictures down in the mines, and he had the good camera.

The mine from the surface. If you can see the number of people under those tents waiting to get in, you'll get an idea of how popular this place is.

I definitely took this picture so I wouldn't forget the name of  it. There was no way I was going to remember it on my own.

Here's the wiki info about the mine, if you're interested in details, because, as per usual, this will mostly be my disconnected thoughts and opinions. And a brief description of how I licked the wall to verify its saltiness. 

The mine was begun in the 13th century and is one of the oldest in the world. It was still in production until 1996 and had been continuously up to that point. Today, it still produces salt but not by means of mining; they pump salt water up from underground bodies of water and harvest the salt from the water. 

There are 9 levels of the mine, but we only saw the top 3. And by "we only saw the top 3," I mean, "but we still walked over 2 kilometers down underground." It is one vast mine.

We took an elevator up at the end of our tour, but we walked the whole way down/into the mine. I'm not sure if you can tell, but this is the view down the staircase on our first major descent. We literally could not see the bottom. And, I was dizzy by the time we got down there.

We had a tour guide with us for 2.5 hours. When she told us how long the tour was going to be, I thought, "How in the world is there that much to say or see about a mine?" Answer: Somehow, there just is. 

See Jordan's (standing, far right) fancy boxy necklace? We each had one of those + headphones so we could hear our guide (far left) as she talked into her microphone. The mines are really echo-y, and there are quite a lot of groups (there are over 2 million visitors each year).

The legend of how the mine was discovered centers around St. Kinga, who was a princess that wanted her dowry to be the finding and establishment of a salt mine. According to the legend (if I'm remembering correctly...otherwise, I might just be making stuff up), she actually threw her engagement ring into some cavernous opening (this is where my memory gets sketchy...a well? a pit? a cave?), and when the salt mine was found and miners began their work, they actually found her ring. Magical. Kismet. Totally meant to be.

Miners presenting Kinga with her lost (and then found) ring.

The mine has had some famous visitors through the ages. Obvious ones like Pope John Paul II and Goethe...but also Copernicus. No big thing. They even carved a salt statue of him:

Essentially everything down in the mines is made of salt (with exceptions of safety features, stairs, etc.), so every statue that we saw was made of salt. As are the floors, walls, and ceilings. Our guide said, "If you are skeptical, taste the wall." So I did. Don't get me wrong- I didn't lick it like you would an ice cream cone. It was more of a quick touch. And it was salty, guys. Brad held off on tasting it for a long while until we pressured him into it. He'd heard Piotr mention that he'd visited the mine on a field trip when he was in middle school. Brad then started imagining all of the thousands of middle schoolers who had tasted the walls through the years...It's more fun if you DON'T think about that part.

Here's a shot of a staircase (used by visitors...not made by miners), and some wooden support beams, which were impressive in their own right.

They have a little segment of the tour devoted to demonstrating how the miners used to test for methane. Those who were assigned this terribly dangerous job were said to be doing "penance," because they had to crawl on their knees to do it. Um, I seriously hope they got paid A LOT for that. Everything about that sounds terrible.

Our guide told us on several occasions that working in the mines was always considered a very lucrative and impressive job. They never used slaves or children; it was reserved as an honorable job. It paid really well because of a) how valuable and b) how risky it was. There were also a few horses who worked the mines, and quite a lot of clever engineering went into efficient and labor-saving machinery and processes used by the miners.

There are also quite a few underground lakes (a little too reminiscent of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince for my taste) that are, apparently, as salty as, if not saltier, than the Dead Sea.

One of the lakes. It was part-beautiful, part-creepy. Mostly creepy. Drat you, Harry Potter 6.

My very favorite parts of the mine tour, though, were the chapels. Yes, chapels. Not only is there a place of worship, there are many. Some are very small little prayer chapels, but there are quite a few larger ones, including a cathedral-sized chapel. The miners spent such long stretches down in the mines and had such perilous jobs that they decided they wanted places to pray. How crazy-yet-fascinating is that?

A smaller chapel that is still regularly used by locals or people who rent out parts of the mine for special events. This one, obviously, includes wood.

This is a shot down into the cathedral-sized chapel. It was absolutely amazing. Even those CHANDELIERS are made from salt. Chandeliers, y'all.

In this shot, you can see the pattern of the floor tiles. And the chandeliers. It is still blowing my mind.

Altar area. They hold mass here every Sunday morning at 7, and people get married here regularly, too (there's also a ballroom and banquet area down in the mines).

Along the walls of the chapel are relief murals of Bible stories, including this replication of "The Last Supper." They're so beautiful and ornate.

This entire chapel was crafted by only 3 men over the course a few decades. To make it more interesting, the three men never worked on it together- they each worked on it alone in their turn. Isn't that unbelievable? The scope of the craftsmanship + engineering was amazing.

At the end of the tour, we rode an elevator (a claustrophobic's nightmare of an elevator- be warned if that's you) back to the surface. After 2.5 hours of walking, I felt no shame in scarfing my pizza at the on-property restaurant we ate lunch at. The whole experience, including the pizza, were so worth our time. It completely lived up to my expectations! Both the visuals and the tastables.