So, we started the day early with the intentions of checking out St Mary's Tower and the bugle playing fireman. The bugle player plays to announce the start and end of the day. However, he also played it to warn the city of an impending attack but wasn't able to finish the song because he was shot through the neck with an arrow. Thus, to commemorate this incident the bugle is now played for only a few minutes before the song ends abruptly. Here is a picture of Dwarf in front of the famous bugle in St. Mary's Tower.
While in the Czech Republic, we were told that we had the chance to check out a crypt where the bones of the dead are stacked to the walls and fill dozens of rooms. We were kind of disappointed that we missed this but I found out that a church within Krakow has a basement crypt with the well preserved bodies of the monks that served the church. Apparently, the basement has a microbial environment that limits the decay of flesh. When we got there we couldn't find anyone there. We waited around were about to leave when we stopped a man exiting the church and asked him about the crypt. He didn't speak english well but did repeat the word crypt. This is when he took us into the church, lifted a weird trap door in the floor, and took us down into the crypt. It was really very scary down there. There were about 8 rooms with dead monks all over the place. Some were in coffins, while others were lying on the floor. He spoke Polish to us and I don't know what he was saying but I guess he was trying to be funny or something because he kept knocking the monks on the skull and laughing. This is probably the best place that we've visited so far. Not well known, no other tourists came while we were there. It felt pretty neat to be able to go somewhere not many other people get to see. I recommend getting to the Bielany monastary and seeing these mummies, if you can. The monastary is connected to the St. Casimir Church and hopefully you'll find someone there to let you in.
When we left Norm really wanted to check out the royal knight fights that he saw an ad for. Really, it turned out to be some very, very, very keen Polish Dungeon and Dragon players acting out what their dreams of living in historic times. I must say, even though they weren't very athletic (show me a 12-sided die player that is in shape) but some of these guys went pretty hard at each other. We left after about 30 minutes. I can't really believe we paid to go to this.
Well, we were scheduled to go to the famous Wieliczka Salt Mines, which is a UNESCO monument later in the day, we spent the rest of the time that we had before getting to the bus to take us out to the salt mines getting out to Schindler's factory, which is on the other side of the river in Krakow. It was further away than we thought but I think it was worth going to. We had to fake our way in since it wasn't open to the public. This is a picture of Dwarf out front of factory that Schindler worked out of during World War II. (I don't know who the man in the blue shirt is.) We ended the day at the salt mines. It was okay. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it, though. A lot of salt and a lot of hokey salt statues. It's cool that it was about 300 metres underground.
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