Cave mining in the heat

June 2019 - Poland

I decided to do a short graduation trip to Krakow with uni friends. Much hotter weather than expected, it was around 32 degrees. The general cost of living was very cheap. Especially the food, you could eat a lot for a good price.

Krakow had a nice atmosphere and wasn’t too busy but also wasn’t too empty. Favourite food would have to be pierogi, which is mostly similar to Chinese dumplings but the fillings would vary.

The main place to visit was old town which was like the centre of the town and had most of the main streets branching out from it. You would always see carriages with horses and tourists being carried around here and the streets.

Another place visited was Wawel Royal castle, which had lots of different exhibition rooms to visit. Did one day trip to Auschwitz. There is option to do both with and without tour guide. Should book in advance but if you don’t (like we did) – you should go quite early (around 7am) to get the tickets. We decided to explore by ourselves in the morning and do the tour in afternoon. Found the tour much better as they took us to key places and the camp was spread across two locations.

For another day trip, we decided to go to the Wieliczka Salt Mine. For me, this was the most fun experience as we got to dress up as miners and go through the mine which was underground. It was also quite cold so could escape the heat outside. We had torch light and had to go in tour groups with a guide. There are two routes; tourist route or miners route. We chose miner’s route. Could see the caves and salt formation on walls.

Overall, pleasant trip and think the number of days was perfect. Think 2 days enough to see Krakow (or maybe even 1) and then a day each to do the day trips.

Sus