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The plan is to do a city break, the first day we spend round the town visit the castel and town square and after much toing and froing go to the salt mines instead of Auschwitz as orginally planned. We will go to the mines on an organised tour, we had walked the town last night and found it was teeming with tourists, there is a great atmosphere here, but it also means the sights are ruled by tour groups and as an independant you get left at the back all the time.
The weather is very hot, so we walk to the Wawel castle and take an audio guide tour, they are very strict in staying to time limits, you have to buy tickets for different sections of the castle, it is not expensive, but after about three hours and losing each other at the dragons lair, we wander back into the castle to see the last thing but it is so hot, we decide to move into town as Jack wants to see some preserved bodies in a Monastery the other side of the old town as well. We find the monastery but it is closed for the summer, so back to the main square and an ice cream! lots of those here, we then go back for a rest and will eat in the town this evening.
Salt mines
We meet our pick up at 9am for the salt mines we sit in the foyer one other guy is there then a group of Americans arrive as well, a doidgy looking geezer comes in and takes the American group, then ours arrives as well, all three of us pile into a minibus, we pick up some others and go to the salt mines, funnily enough we meet the Americans there as well, but htis is a welloiled machine, there hundreds of people milling about all put into groups and we wait for our guide, we are given an audio set each and start the tour, first off it is a downward trek of 54 flights of wooden steps 380 I am told by Jack, she feels each one of them( her knee is still dodgy from her crash) but she is determined to see the mine. We have a tour of about three hours and walk about 3 kilometers, we have one collapsed woman from vertigo?? we are going down, but to be fair the chambers high and we had to walk down steps to reach the bottom, the tour was good and iot was nice to be somewhere cool for a while, Jack had to lick the walls to make sure they were salt, and they were Yuk! was her reaction, as was mine as I would hate to think how many others had done that before her! there were some amazing sights to see, chaples and statues carved by the miners in salt.
Once finshed we were deposited back to our hotels, which left us enough time to pack then mooch around the town once more to listen to the live music, eat and people watch. Krakow is a great place for a city break very tourist friendly and much to see, maybe we will pop back, oh and lots of loverly ice cream to be tested!! fruiti du bosco our favourite! with a cup of tea or coffee. Tomorrow we travel to Warsaw it is going to be a long day we think as no motorways just A type roads.
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