Ol' Satly... er, I mean, Weezy

This morning, following the ketchup episode at breakfast, we heard what sounded like shouting. We craned our heads out of the window of our hotel and saw some sort of military thingy (very official, I know) going on so we ran down to see what was happening (Men in uniform... Holla!). It was kind of entertaining, especially when they started singing their national anthem. They had one man singing the ditty on the microphone (who sang well) and the rest of them sang along as best they could (which was basically a 'who can "sing" it the loudest' ala 3rd grade boy contest).
Once we had taken our inappropriate photos, we went back to our hotel so that we made it back to the hotel to meet up with the tour we had booked to see the Wieliczka Salt Mine. Now, I had this vision in my head of what the tour was going to be. Going down into the mine, seeing how they mined the salt, seeing machines in action. Right, so this isn't the first time I have been sorely mistaken.
We were picked up by our tour company at 9:15 a.m. and then made the rounds to pick up the other tourists that had booked as well. This is where we met Ol' Weezy and reminded ourselves that a) a private tour is always better than a public tour and b) we need to lose weight.
Ol' Weezy got into the bus and was pissed, right off the get-go. Theirs was the last hotel to be driven to and there were only small seats at the back of the van available. With a roll of the eyes, she turned sideways and pushed past us, brushing her breasts/gut/gunt (I'm not sure which, or in what order) against our arms with every wheezy step. Thank god the majority of the tour saw us climbing 'DOWN.'
We climbed down the steps (here's a picture of Ryan peering down the many flights of stairs) and got to the bottom. So... How can I accurately describe this... Turns out that the tour (in my opinion) was a really horrible, salty version of a Disneyland-esque 'It's a Small World' sans boat. Here's a salt sculpture of a miner! Here's a salt sculpture of Pope John Paul II! Here's a salt chandelier! Here's another salt sculpture of Pope John Paul II! On the plus side, it was really dark and cool being 130 metres below ground.
To make matters worse, they told us about the horses that they used to mine the salt. They would lower the horses underground on ropes and the animals would have to live their entire existence never seeing the light of day because there was no way to get them back to the surface. The horses were last used (read: died) four years ago. So nasty. Anyway... I have to stop describing the situation because I am at risk of getting in trouble... Ryan says I exaggerate everything (I'll blame the Ratzlaff side) .
Once we got back, we had lunch (not worth mentioning, except the amazing perogies which happen to be everywhere) and walked around. We went to St. Mary's Basilica in the heart of town which happened to buzzing... we're guessing that the military thingy we saw at breakfast was some kind of Veterans Day celebration.
After shopping for awhile and taking pictures of some of the locals using their talents to make a buck:
we sat down on the hotel's outdoor terrace for a bottle of wine. Tomorrow we are off to Auschwitz at 8:15 am which should take up most of the day and the following day is just for chilling and wandering the streets of Krakow.