[:en]Poland Road Trip: Wieliczka Salt Mine[:]

By skyangelo
This post is part of the series [:en]Poland Road Trip[:fr]Road Trip en Pologne[:]
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[:en]As the bus from Elblag to Krakow was really late, we only have time to drop our backpack in the hostel then took the local train to Wieliczka Rynek Kopalnia train station for the visit of Salt Mine in the afternoon. My first visit of the Salt Mine was in August 2010 and there were no local train and the Salt Mine had only one tourist route. Now there are several type of visit available: tourist route, miners’ route, pilgrims’ route etc.

Top Tourist Attraction

The “Wieliczka” Salt Mine is one of the most valuable monuments of material and spiritual culture in Poland. Each year it is visited by more than 1.2 million tourists from all over the world!

#1 of Seven Wonders of Poland

#1 of the list from the public vote in September 2007.

UNESCO World Heritage Site

It is also a world class monument since 1978, featuring among twelve objects on the UNESCO’s World Cultural and Natural Heritage List.

Visited the salt mine first with Miners’ Route then Tourist Route for the whole afternoon.

snapshot from the official salt mine website

The two routes are not connected and have different entries. For Miners’ Route, you get a protective coverall and mining equipment: a lamp, a POG absorber and a helmet.
We did some activities like miners (e.g. cut a wood in a old fashion way, pray in the underground church, crawl in tiny space, explore the salt crystal) and tasted the pure salt crystal and saturated salty water…

At the end of the visit we were certificated as professional miners of the Miners’ Route in the Wieliczka Salt Mine. It was a lot of fun!

Regis Shaft, Miners’ Route entry

 

For the tourist route, the Chapel of St. King is the always splendid with chandeliers made with salt crystal and salt statues (especially the one of the Pope John Paul II) and paintings carved in rock salt wall!!

Chapel of St. King
Chapel of St. King

 

 

 

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