September 30, 2014: Day 3 in Krakow

September 30, 2014

This morning we walked through the green space, which was the sight of the city walls, to the Jagiellonian University (650^th year).  The focus of our visit was the Collegium Maius, which is the oldest building on the campus built in the 14^th century.  It houses ceremonial rooms and a museum containing historical items from the university.  We had a guided tour through the museum section which included the professors’ common room, assembly room, and a museum containing astronomical instruments and the Jagiellonian globe.  This globe, dating from around 1510, is the earliest one to depict the Americas separate from Asia.  We then walked around the “campus” and had a group photo taken in front of the Copernicus statue.  Copernicus was a student at Jagiellonian University. 

After the Jagiellonian University, we walked to the Wawel Hill and a view of the Dragon of Wawel, which breathes fire every couple of minutes, in front of the Dragon’s Den.  I then proceeded back to the hotel to catch up on photos and post to the blog before heading out for a walk along the Vistula River to the Old Jewish Quarter.  The walk along the river was very nice with good views of the city.  Returning to the hotel, there was about 20 minutes before boarding the bus for our trip to the Wieliezka Salt Mines for a tour and dinner deep within the mine.

The trip to the mines took about 30 minutes and we were quickly loaded onto miners’ elevators and taken down to the first (upper) level of the mine.  From there we walked through rooms of salt sculptures and descended deeper into the mine.  Most of the sculptures were of historical figures in the life of Poland and religious figures, including chapels.  All the sculptures were created by the miners.  We enter the largest cavern, which was a church sculptured out of the salt.  This included large salt crystal chandeliers.  Once we descended to the deepest section of the mine (135 m) we entered a reception hall where we had a lovely dinner, which is depicted in the slideshow.  The first course was asparagus rolled in ham, which was followed by an entrée of pork roast with a berry sauce.  Dessert consisted of ice cream with poached pears with white wine sauce.  Such a fine dinner was not expected at the 135 m of a salt mine!