Well we now know the answer to the age old question: how many people can you squeeze into a minibus? Answer - 30! On route back from Auschwitz we took a rather interesting journey home in one of the mini vans. We were about half full when the driver took us into some back street garage, then raced another mini van to another carpark where we all had to get off and switch vehicles. Some more people joined us and the van was full. We then did a few laps of Oswieci...

Visited the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps today. It brought home a lot of the horrors of the holocaust and was scary how big the camps actually were. Will certainly make teaching it in school more realistic as I now have more materials and information to use. I think the most shocking part was the material evidence and the huge piles of glasses, shoes and other items the Nazis took from those they murdered. It's hard to express quite how many items ...

Simon has decided he is in love with Polish food. "Its like english food only with different spices." Went out for a very nice meal where we had traditional homemade lemonade and ate Polish stuffed dumplings and potato pancakes with goulash. Very filling and tasty.

Having made it safely to our hotel last night (thanks to a rather comfy taxi ride in an Audi) this morning we set out to visit Auschwitz. Unfortunately we didn't make it due to much confusion on the trains. Did make it to Krakow however. Went to visit the salt mines at Wieliczka this afternoon. And no I do not know how to pronounce that. We walked down a lot of steps and saw how the mines were worked. Never thought it was possible but these were beautiful mines....

Take off! We are at the airport. Waiting to board the plane and set off to Poland. After much confusion whilst checking in online we discovered that Rachel is now a Mr and the hotel just around the corner from the airport is actually a six hour walk away. Turns out the airport we were looking at was actually an air club and the actual airport is miles away. Ah well we are here now and Simon even made it through security.