Krakow:
Sunday, November 10

6:45am - pack - breakfast - check bags - go for bus, no train - 9:20 bus

Whole town is up and moving - birds and people - coffee from concessionaire, hot water with coffee powder on top, Cremora and sugar lumps

On the bench waiting for Wieliczka bus - Susan and Lynn! from the train! - "Where'd you stay, How's Krakow for you? Where'd you eat?" - now off to the salt mines

Walking in foursome down the hill, looking for any indication of Salt Mine entrance - walk past, come back - inside and buy tickets - Wade gets a student ticket! - lines up, ticket taker looks at him and his grey hair, "Student?" (gulp) "Carte?" - back to the ticket window to pay the difference

Down we go - hundreds of wooden steps down, seven per landing

Two Irishmen show up in our group - typically warm, gregarious, forward - one in our group (you must stay in your group: #145) is English student in her final year of University - she gladly, demurely translates for us English-speakers

Salt over, under, before, behind - 700 years of salt excavation plus prehistoric evidence of human presence - wheels and gears driven by horses - men lowered hundreds of meters stacked on ropes - all for salt

Then they began to carve figures of salt - saints, heros, kings, queens, an entire chapel with salt crystal chandeliers - a choir loft in a salt balcony - salt carved into floor tile shapes, bas relief sculptures of the Murder of the Holy Innocents and the Last Supper

Keep walking down deeper into the mine - Franz Josef I started tourist visits over 100 years ago and invited his friends - many came - so did today's Polish Pope

More tools, ancient ropes, depictions of old mining operations - a miner's prayer room

Gave an Olympic pin to our impromptu interpreter, then to our train chums - get a Canada pin from Lynn in return

Catch a "Lux Bus" back to Centrum (city center of Krakow) - Goodbye forever to Susan and Lynn?

Into old Krakow for food - back to pizza, full; back to Balaton, full - no, come back, coat check man who knows us sees a seat - waitress from Friday says all with a smile

Back through the market in the square one last time - holiday crowds are huge - dachshund in an old man's lap near us at our coffee-on-the-square place - wonderful trumpet soloist echoes jazz Beethoven with pal on synthesizer

4:00pm - messenger bugle shot again in St. Mary's - right on time