Krakow

Really cold this morning---about twenty five degrees when we got up, but since it was sunny, it didn't feel quite as bad.  Went for a walk through the market square and headed out for the salt mine.  By the time we got there, it was beautiful and about 55 degrees.  We decided to miss the weather and go underground on a tour.  To start the tour you walk down stairs for about 150 feet.  If you look down between the stairs that spiral, you get a lump in your throat.  It takes about fifteen minutes too get down tha far.  Donna joked that this might be the end of the tour.  But then you walk for about utwo miles through a series of mineshafts that have been in operation since the fourteen hundreds.  The walls and ceilings are supported by timbers, which as a result of all the salt in the air don't decompose over time.  Some of the actual logs from the 13th century are still there.  Pretty amazing.  There's lots of figures sculpeted out of salt, and huge cavernous rooms.  There's a cathedral, actually two, and a huge dining room tha looked like you could have at least a thousand for dinner.  At the end, they walk you through the gift shop, and tell you how to go towards the elevator that will take you to the top.  But not until you go through the restaurant, snack bar, and two other gift shops where they have quite the selection of over priced salt.  From there, you have to wait till a guide leads you to the elevator----a very loose term.  It's actually a miners elevator, which takes some getting used to.  It's pretty much a steel box with ventilation holes all through it that rises like a bat out of hell.  When the counterbalance goes by you like a runaway truck you swallow hard.

Back home and into town for dinner.  We hit the Aregentinian steakhouse, which actually imports beef from Argentina....Go Figure...We decide to share the mixed steak plate which the waiter says probably won't be quite enough..............brought the leftovers home and we'll be finishing them tomorrow nite.  Tonight we're just goung to read books and take a break, tomorrow we spend the day wandering around and hitting Wawel Castle.