Salt mine / The Jewish Quarter

After a fairly lazy start - I think Izzy has a lot of uninterrupted sleep to catch up on! - we had a cracking breakfast at a café that the Minx had found, and then took the train out to Wieliczka to visit the salt mine. 

I'm not sure what I was expecting really, but certainly nothing like the actual experience, which started with a long, long descent down flight upon flight of wooden stairs until we were about a 100 metres underground. (This was more like a traditional stairwell and not my Blip.)

Our able guide walked us through (literally) kilometres of passages, stopping from time to time in different rooms to share with us the history of the mine. My Extras hardly capture how incredible it was but I have included: our guide; an underground church; a rendition of The Last Supper carved into the rock; and an underground pool.

The whole experience was incredible and I would definitely recommend it as long as you don't mind being far underground and doing a considerable amount of walking. The good news is that there is a lift back to the surface at the end, although they pack eighteen people in per journey and that was the most claustrophobic part of the experience!

And in the evening we went out to the Jewish Quarter, which I promptly fell in love with. Loads of great old streets and buildings, with a wealth of restaurants and gorgeous little bars. Oh, to have even one of them in Manchester! Small, dark, cosy, a little rough around the edges at times, I could have spent the whole evening in any of the ones we visited.