Saltly Polish Mines and Pierogies

February 27, 2008 | Filed Under Travel 

I know you probably can’t wait to hear about real Polish pierogis, but you are going to have to wait until later in the post . . .

As Saturday was my last full day without travel in Europe, we decided to start the day off right with a bit of the ol’ hair of the dog. The Polish vodka is pretty good, but I’m not much of a vodka fan. Well, as far as sipping it straight out of the bottle and warm, anyway. So on Saturday we tried this cherry vodka. Mmmm, that stuff was dangerous!

We decided to hit one tourist trap, I mean, attraction before leaving the country. We ventured to the Wieliczka Salt Mine which is 6 miles south of the city. The trip down into the mine was made my walking down 380 some odd steps.

Salt was a very important export for Poland for hundreds of years. This salt is very dark due to impurities in it. It was worth enough money that it was sometimes referred to as ‘black gold. This mine has 300km of tunnels, and some enormous chambers. This chamber is a chapel, and is used for wedding ceremonies. There is another big banquet room for the reception. The photography challenges would be interesting, since it’s very dark. But some people must do it for the novelty of getting married 400 feet under ground.

Once down inside . . . the main attractions inside the mine were sculputures carved out of the salt.

Click on the read more for the rest of the salt mine and the hunt for perogies!

The ride back out of the mine was pretty crazy, they cram the lift jam packed!

Once returning to town, we set out on a very important mission; to find real Polish perogies. It was very important to find out what they were like, and how they stack up to Mrs. T’s that you get in the supermarket.

It took us quite a while to find somewhere that had them, because everything closes by around 3pm on Saturday. Luckily we hit the jackpot, and found a pierogi specialty restaraunt that was open until 4!

The girl behind the counter spoke just enough English to explain what was in each of them. They had spinach, potato and cheese, cheese and bacon, mushroom, sourkraut, some fruit dessert type ones, and thats all I can remember right now. We got an order of spinich, and an order of potato and cheese.

Needless to say they were really good. They were boiled and not grilled at all to be crispy. The secret ingredient are those little yellow-brown chunks on the top. I asked what they are but I can’t remember the Polish word for them. Basically, it’s some kind of pig part. Possibly the skin. Pig grease makes everything good!

The girl was looking at me like I was crazy for taking all of these pictures of the pierogis. But that’s OK, I’m used to it by now. The rest of the day was spent walking around trying to walk off the gut bomb. My wheat intolerance caught up with me and I almost didn’t make it out in the evening.

Depite feeling kindof sleepy, I rallied to go out and try to find some bars with dancing. As it turns out the Jewish neighborhood by our hotel sees a lot of action from the locals on Saturday night. We tried out a couple places but Opium was the best. There was a variety of music, but a lot of 80s dance stuff. These pics were taken during the day but you get the idea.

So overall Krakow was a pretty cool place. It wasn’t quite as cheap as we thought it might be. Food is all over the map. Some of it is really cheap, while some places can be full European tourist prices. The beer is generally cheap, but drinking in the clubs costs the same (or more) than in the US. The prices of food at the airport in Warsaw was insane. Like $12 for 5 pierogies! We ate gelato instead.

OK well, that bring my European adventure reporting to an end. I hope you enjoyed reading, it took me quite a bit of time to do all this and Debby was getting mad at me for spending so much time on the computer so I hope it was worth it! Alright, now it’s time to return to all of the shoots that I have in my queue that I’ve lined up before I left.

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