- The Bochnia salt mine was founded in 1248. According to a legend the mine was founded by St. Kinga, the daughter of Hungarian King Bela IV. The legend tells us, that St. Kinga had already received a salt mine from his father, which was located in Transylvania and following the medieval customs, she threw her ring into the shaft. Later while she was on her way to Krakow, she rested in Bochnia area and had a dream which encouraged her to dig in the shoemaker's garden. Salt was found from the spot where a small shaft was dug and from the first lump of salt, the ring was discovered,  which she had thrown in the Transylvanian mine.

- Believe the legend or not, but St. Kinga at least has her own portrait in the church of the mine, some 200 meters below the ground level. Also the village of Bochnia and the surrounding area dates from the time when the mine was founded in 1248.

- After that event, the mine has been in constant use and it was closed only some ten years ago. The common belief is that Wieliczka salt mine is the oldest one in Poland, but that's not really true. Bochnia is the oldest one and most likely the misunderstanding is because Wieliczka is heavily marketed as a tourist attraction and has been open for public a lot longer. Bochnia on the other hand, doesn't receive outside funding nearly at all and has not been included to the UNESCO's World Heritage List for some reason...

- The tour takes you to 200 meters below the ground level and the elevator definitely is not suitable for everybody. It's an original cage, where four to five people are stuffed together and then your journey down below starts. At some point, you ears will also pop in a similar way as in airplane. If you're claustrophobic, avoid the whole place as I started to panic also a bit when they needed to close the cage doors and there just wasn't any room to move inside the elevator. Finally I had to lift my camera bag on top of my head and held it like that for the minutes it takes to reach the bottom...

- The church or sanctuary for St. Kinga. I really don't know, as we had thought that you are able to walk freely in the mine, but that was not really the case. In the end, we walked with a group of people...who happened to be Polish, meaning that the guide spoke Polish constantly. So a lot of interesting information probably went past our ears, even when there was a nice Polish man, who translated some part of the speech for us.

- Even deeper...