Salt Mine Adventure

Today, I drove up to Turda, Romania to go to the salt mines. (Yeah yeah, I know the name is funny. Go ahead and take a few moments to get it out of your system.) We pile into the cars and head down the road. I don't know if this was on purpose or by accident, but all the guys piled into one car, and all the girls were in the other car (except Alison, she was with her hubby and Elijah in the boys car).

Dave is driving, and I'm riding in the front seat. He was pretty chatty the whole way, but all the while we're chatting I have a phrase repeating in the back of my mind. "Speed up. Speed up. Speed up."

We were the second car in a two car caravan, and the first car would be a hundred feet in front of us, then two hundred, then three hundred....then we lost them....then we got lost. Really? You didn't see them getting away? If I was in charge that wouldn't have happened.

We drive around for a while following the many signs to the salt mines, but then we stop seeing signs. Hmmm, we must be lost. We turn around and drive back to the last sign we saw, or we tried to find that last sign. We didn't find it. Instead we found a nice lady pushing a stroller. "Salt Mines?" We asked in Romanian, but luckily she spoke English. (Thank you, Jesus.) She gave us a few directions and we were back on track.

Then the phone buzzed. One missed call. It buzzed again a few minutes later. Another missed call. Then I picked up the phone, and it buzzed in my hand, but before I could answer it, the person hung up. If you want to talk, then you have to give me a chance to pick up!

As we drive along the road we drive past a familiar spot. "Hey, wasn't that the spot where we thought we were lost and we turned around?" Yep. It was. We were going the right way, but didn't even know it. It wasn't much further before we got to the entrance to the mines.

We get out of the cars, and the girl from the other car that kept calling and hanging up explained that it's cheaper if people call her instead of her calling them. So when she calls and hangs up, that's the signal to call her back. Yeah, I didn't know that.

We walk up to the entrance to the mines and it's a pretty fancy tourist attraction. I took pictures and I'll put them on Facebook as soon as my battery is charged. (My camera ran out of batteries about halfway through our visit.)

It costs about $3.22 (10 lei) to get in. We start heading down the stairs. Down down down we go. Then we get to a long carved out hallway/corridor. The first thing along the corridor is a room where people pay lots of money to just sit in. Apparently, breathing in the very salty air is good for your lungs if you have a sickness. So, people pay money to come and sit in this room and breathe. We looked at those people through the glass. (That reminds me, I haven't been to an aquarium in a long time. We should go. :) )

Then we continued down the long corridor. Our next stop was a church. It wasn't very big, and there was a very blue light shining down on a cross, but they told me it was a church so I went with it.

Next, some more stairs. Down down down. Then I see a railing. Hmmm, I wonder what's over there? I walked over to it and looked over the edge. :-0 It was at least 300 feet down! Imagine looking off of the top of a 30 story building! I took a couple steps back. It was making me dizzy. I tried to snap a few photos, but I don't know how well they came out since I was a couple feet from the railing after stepping back.

We walk down a few more steps and get to the elevator of the main cave. This place is huge! While the (glass!) elevator was going down, I took pictures the whole way down. That helped me not be so dizzy.

We get to the bottom and there is mini-golf, bowling, billiards, basketball, ping pong, and a ferris wheel! Then I see another railing. Hmmm, I wonder what's over there? Oh Wow! We're not on the bottom! The cave goes down another 100 feet or so to an underground lake.

We take another elevator down there and you can rent rowboats and row around the lake. There's four of us, so we rent two boats. Emma and I are in one boat, and Dan and Elizabeth are in the other boat. The boys are in charge of the rowing, the girls are in charge of looking pretty. Three of us do our jobs, one of us does not. (I'm looking at you Dan.) Emma and I circle the small island three times in the twenty minutes that we have. Dan and Elizabeth circle the island once. They were having some trouble. It was making Emma and I laugh. :)

We take the stairs back up to the level with the ferris wheel, and hang out here for a while. We played some mini-golf. We played some basketball. We watched the ferris wheel go slowly around. It was very nice.

Then Elizabeth walks up to me with the bright idea that we should take the stairs back up instead of the elevator. I'm game. I've hiked out of the Grand Canyon in under two hours. (Four hours down, two hours up if I remember.) Dan comes with us.

Dan goes first, then Elizabeth, then me. Dan races to the top pretty easily. Elizabeth has some trouble, but makes it to the top. I stay with Elizabeth and make sure she gets to the top. I thought I would be tired, but it wasn't that bad.

Once everyone is at the top we go back to the main corridor, and continue walking. We see some old mining equipment that was pretty cool. By then my camera had run out of batteries so I couldn't take pictures.

Then we get to a place where if you shout, you can hear 16 echos! We lean over the edge and all the outgoing people start shouting and counting. I counted 13 legitimate echos, so it's not hard to imagine that if you were really quiet, you could hear a few more. We weren't being quiet enough to hear those last faint ones.

After that we were done. It was really fun.

PS, I think Austin and I are officially the only people in Romania wearing shorts today. :) When you're used to temperatures being in the 20's (fahrenheit), the 40's feel like a warm Spring day.