Krakow: Wieliczka Salt Mine, Almost – Trying to visit both Auschwitz Concentration Camp & Wieliczka Salt Mine in a day is definitely not a good idea, especially during winter! We missed a bus at Auschwitz and only reached back the city of Krakow at about 4pm, hopped on the 4.15pm bus hoping to reach by 5pm as the website of Wieliczka Salt Mine stated that the last entry is 5pm, yet not sure what time does it really closes, and we couldn’t make it despite we reached the Wieliczka at 4.53pm.
7 more minutes, yet we couldn’t make it as we didn’t know the direction from the bus stop. When we found the direction, only then we know it’s about 800m away. We puffed our way to the salt mine and sadly, the entrance was pitch black, closed and no people around. Then we saw a sign ‘Salt Mine closes at 3pm during Winter’, laughter broke out as we were trying to gasp for the cool air. HAHAHA.
Even if we did not miss the bus back in Auschwitz, we would still not be able to make it. So it’s surely not recommended to visit 2 major attractions in a day, unless you are on a paid tour that brings you to both of them.
The salt mine were built in the 13th century where people carved into the solid walls of salt with hand tools to extract them for table salt. It’s one of the first UNESCO listed site back in the 70s and the underground area spans up to 3km of gallery and museum. It sounds quite amazing, and it may need some times to tour around the underground as it’s quite deep and long.
Too bad, we didn’t get to visit it. A backpacker at our hostel told us that the salt mine was just ‘salty’, and that’s her description of it and she told us that we had made a good choice visiting Auschwitz first instead of the salt mine. Ah, what a comfort words to us.
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