We made a day trip out of Krakow to the town of Wieliczka, famous for its Heritage-listed salt mine. We took a tour through about 3km of the mine, which is only around 1% of the mine’s length – it’s been mined for several centuries and in their "spare time" the miners have made the effort to dig out numerous chapels, concert halls, caverns and lakes. Fascinating!
The Chapel of the Blessed Kings. One of the dioramas in the caverns.
I’m now in Krakow and enjoying it so far. Everyone we spoke to said most of the action in Poland is in and around Krakow, so we made a bee-line for the city after we left Bratislava behind.
Krakow really is a delightful little city. A bit too touristy for my liking, but it carries its burden pretty well. It has a fairly compact old town with a massive medieval town square (about 200m x 200m!) and a good smattering of churches. Our plans here include walking up to the castle on Wawel Hill, touring the old Jewish quarter of the city, exploring the depths of the Wieliczka salt mine, and of course taking a sobering trip out to Auschwitz.
Some of the many horse-drawn carriages that do the rounds of town square.
We left Budapest early this morning and headed north-west to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. This wasn’t really on our "to do" list, however it conveniently broke up our journey to Krakow in Poland.
Who knows, maybe I’m already city-d out, but I didn’t think much of Bratislava. Sure there were some lovely renaissance buildings in the old town, and the impressive castle up on the hill definitely dominates the skyline, but the Soviet apartment blocks that line the other side of the Danube probably give a better indication of what this city is like.
Left: Michael’s Tower in the Old Town. Right: The Primate’s Palace.
Left: Bratislava Castle atop Castle Hill. Right: The view from Castle Hill towards the oh-so-attractive Communist-built apartment blocks across the Danube river.
NB: Have no fear though any Slovakians who might be reading this blog! I’m definitely planning on coming back to Slovakia to do some hiking through the High Tatras, a wild and picturesque mountain range in the north of the country (near Poland). I’ll probably hit that up after Krakow.