Christmas in Warszawa; the whole family around a full
table. Right: a salt sculpture of Copernicus made from salt in
the Wieliczka salt mines near Krakow.
Happy New Year to all who read this newsletter!
We are just back home from very nice holidays in Poland. Actually we had white Christmas in Warsaw, as well as a white New Year in Krakow. The temperature was around -5 degrees and there was a few sunny beautiful days. Time was passing very fast but we managed to visit some of our friends and family. After Christmas we left to Krakow with Magda (my step-sister) and Chris. They showed us Wieliczka, the known salt mines near Krakow, which are now turned into unique museum. We spent there about 5 hours underground (200 m) with a guide, walking through old corridors and huge rooms digged by miners years ago. All these corridors and rooms consist of salt and contain many monuments made of salt (like the one of Copernicus). The most impressive was the biggest chapel made of salt. It had a floor created of one salt plate and altars curved in salt. Even the chandelars are embroiled with cristal salt. It is breath-taking. There is also an interesting exhibition part in the mines, with historical equipment used for salt digging. The Wieliczka salt mines are on the 12th place of UNESCO list of World Heritage, just behind Krakow old city.
We visited Krakow already several times before so this time we spent a lot of evenings in several cafes and restaurants. Most of them are placed in original wine cellars. We continued a never ending discussion going on between Warsaw and Krakow about what is a real "Napoleon cake". Kees decided to try Polish warm beer with spices and he liked it. Besides all this eating and drinking we also visited some musea and saw the famous "Lady with an Ermine" by Leonardo da Vinci, as well as many paintings of Polish masters (for Christmas we got a book about some of them). For New Year we had a big party in a pub that belongs to friends of Magda and Chris. Plenty of food and dancing. Unfortunately there was not so much fireworks in Krakow and the night was so foggy that in fact we did not see any. We came back home about 5 o'clock in the morning.
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Christmas in Warszawa; the whole family around a full |
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Left: One of the small chapels carved in salt in Wieliczka.
Above: One of few treadmills that survived in the world. |