breakfast at hotel kazimierz II, nothing special of course
drove to the Wieliczka Salt Mine
I swear every spare garage/grassy spot/driveway had a parking sign and or a teenager wildly waving towards their place of business, it was stranger than going to ANZ stadium back in the day
turns out we could have bought a ticket online
multiple languages - english every half an hour
89zl with 10zl for taking photos - well worth it
tour with Margaret, very friendly and helpful and took us through at a sensible pace
the salt mines are incredible
first guy
first chapel
second chapel - just monumental in size
pond
gnomes
walkway
second pond
lift out was fun, barely packed six adults and a tiny child in - rated for nine adults in each cage, of which there’s two. Of course it was way too short for me! :)
drive to warsaw was relatively uneventful - by Polish driving standards. 145km/h and I’m getting passed by vans.
lots of construction
we had ridiculous sausages at a BP
more construction
many side roads and little villages thanks to waze, which shaved about 40 minutes off the trip
warsaw drivers are even nuttier. they’re all over the place - two guys in high end mercedes were playing in traffic at I’d wager well over 170km/h, passing me at 135 like I was stopped. everyone else just ducks and weaves like it’s a race
finally arrived at where we were supposed to meet the person, we were late, which was on us
turns out the apartment was somewhere else, weird place.
dinner at Brooklyn in Warsaw. Another place by someone that’s read a lot about America without going there - or hasn’t been there since the 90’s?
Battered and fried jalapeno slices with blue cheese sauce RMB had onion rings with sour cream and chives - weird
main was remoulade hot dogs - beef sausage made it way more “meaty” than the Icelandic version, but didn’t have the right mustard or other sauces - wasn’t terrible. the fries were shoestring, which sucked
RMB had the mushroom burger, which had a bunch of cheese and a few mushrooms and two patties which had been abused on the grill. Somehow both dry and not entirely cooked. Weird.
Cheap Finlandia vodka saved the night and improved RMB’s mood somewhat :)
Staying in the “Blue Book Apartment Grzybowska” which isn’t on Grzybowska, that’s just where you meet someone and you get taken to somewhere else - a place on the 16th floor of 20 Jana Pawla II. The soviet-era “we don’t pay for doors on the car” elevator only goes to 15, so you have to haul ass up some stairs after getting through the meaty security gate. The place is a weird converted something, the roof upstairs is too low and the stairs themselves are terrifying. At least the internet’s fast and the parking is pretty well lit.
The photos don’t even match the place. Ugh.
