Chad and I had a haircutting party tonight. He still has both ears and I didn’t draw blood from either of us. I was pretty impressed with myself. Way to go Elisa! It is pretty easy to make Chad look good though. 🙂
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Posted by Elisa on October 3rd, 2007
Day 2 in Krakow. Not so bad. We had a very lazy morning because we weren’t really looking forward to our sight-seeing options. We decided to hop on a bus and go to the Wieliczka Salt Mines. Besides trying to figure out where the bus stops were, which direction they were going and where you were supposed to get off–it was okay. I found myself saying a little prayer that people spoke at least German. No one did. I am much more capable and confident in speaking German than I realized.
The mines were so great! They were started in the 1200s and go hundreds of meters deep. We went as low as the third level of nine and were 300 meters underground. (800 steps 🙂 ) Miners had made sculptures of gnomes and other miners and world leaders and even Christ figures. A whole cathedral all carved out of salt! It was amazing! We had a great guide and had a lot of fun.
We spent the evening walking around the Old Town and eating hearty Polish cuisine–lots of cabbage. I got to try Borsch (a beet soup) and I liked it. We especially got a kick out of the ramekins of goose lard they would bring to the table with bread. Not too bad. We found some amber jewelry and laughed about how dumb it was that you had to pay to visit their church in the old square–it was very typical of our experience. We visited the former Jewish district. A small part of it was really nice but the majority of it looked plain scary.
We arrived in Prague in the evening and I loved it right away. It was really easy to find our way in the Metro system. The city was hopping with teenagers. Tons of shops were still open at 9 pm. I wanted to stay out and play but I was so tired. So we ate dinner and watched people herd by before we headed to our hotel.
The next day we packed all of Prague in. We started at the Old Town center where there is a famous clock and lots of colorful buildings. We walked past cathedrals playing organ music and over the Charles Bridge. We had a relaxing lunch in a little café where Chad thinks he ate on his last trip. It started to rain and we braved the sprinkling. We had a hot chocolate that was the consistency of pudding. We went to a castle there and its cathedral. We saw the monastery where Michael and Monica Scoville were married and peeked into the old library. We went to a beautiful performance in one of the churches. It was classical music performed by an organist and a mezzo soprano. It was relaxing and a very nice way to end our visit before we went off to the train station.