Sunday, June 7th

Today we decided to visit the salt mine which is one of the main tourist attractions. After carefully studying all of our travel guides, we set off for the bus station to get a bus to the salt mine. Some time later we were still wandering around trying to find the bus station. I mean, how difficult can it be? There were plenty of dubious looking taxi drivers touting for business. Eventually we stopped to talk to one who by pure coincidence had an eight seater cab. So after agreeing the charge, we followed him to his cab which in fact turned out to be OK.

The Wieliczka Salt Mine is a fascinating place. There are 300km of chambers and tunnels going down to 327 metres. Within the chambers there are numerous sculptures carved out of salt and areas which they have developed as museum features. Although we descended hundreds of steps to get down, there was a lift to bring us up again.

After coming out of the mine, our trusty taxi driver was still waiting for us – not surprising I suppose since we hadn’t paid him yet.

On our way back to Krakow, our taxi driver took us to Schindler’s factory which was the subject of the film of the same name. There he was happy to take pictures with a hundred cameras of us standing outside. A true “We wos there” moment!

He then took us to the Jewish Quarter which had some nice looking street cafés, so we got dropped off here and relinquished the taxi driver of his commitment to stick with us until he got paid. We stopped here for lunch and then took a leisuely walk back to the hotel.

Whilst in the Jewish quarter we saw a Red Blackstart..........or was it a black Redstart? Anyway it was a notable bird for being very red...........or was it black?

Our evening meal saw us trying one of the café/restaurants around the main square. Here we made the mistake (or may be not depending on your point of view) of the guys sitting at one table and the girls at another. During the evening, a very nice young lady, seeing the well–heeled debondair guys out on the town, invited us to visit Paradise, a very tasteful Gentleman’s Club. Brian soon put the mockers on this particular entertainment option by asking if the wives could come. The young lady then realised we were together and slunk away looking rather embarassed.