Today's highlight: a tour to the Wieliczka Salt Mine, located in the town of Wieliczka still within the Kraków metropolitan area. Two nights ago we actually stayed within a mile of the mine, but I wasn't yet in a sightseeing mode then and decided to skip it. Well, since then, I've learned to appreciate the magnitude of its importance. Thousands of visitors and hundreds of buses at the mine every day. It's a national treasure, not to mention still actively producing salt with 500 miners. Of dozens of pictures taken of this 700-year-old mine, we include only a few of the underground chapel with da Vinci's "Last Supper" carved in salt, and a mosaic showing a large cavern, carved statues, and mock-ups of horses used for lifting power--an amazing visit.
Then came a stroke of serendipity in that we noticed a sign at the lobby of our "Freedom Hostel" here in Krakow pointing to a museum at the basement level. It turned out to be a former Gestapo holding and execution venue that had since been turned into a museum--the mosaic captures the grim reality of Nazi activities within days of occupying Krakow on Sep 6, 1939. Tomorrow's visit to Auschwitz will amplify what we saw here by orders of magnitude!
