Turda Salt Mine

Today I have organised a guided day tour out of Cluj. I meet Tudor at a statue and we head off in a very comfortable BMW minivan. It's just me today. We chat a bit. He is married with a 3 1/2 month baby boy, Alexandru, 10 lb at birth and 66 cm long!!! Big boy.
After chatting we listen to some easy-listening reggae, "Stick Figure", sounds very much like our Ben Harper's music. Very nice.

Salina Turda is one of the oldest salt mines in Europe, with about 2000 years of extraction activity that began in the pre-Roman era.
The Turda salt deposits date back to ancient times and were dug up to thirty meters deep, leaving tunnels that were used as anti-aircraft shelter during war.
The salt was extracted manually using pickaxes, hammers, chisels, and steel wedges, by free people who were paid in florins, ale, and loaves of bread. The mine was closed in 1932, but it was used again during World War II as a bomb shelter. After the war, the mine served several purposes, one of which was a warehouse for storing cheese.
It was later converted into a tourist attraction and then into a mining museum. The mine has recently been transformed into an incredible and very popular amusement park.
It contains attractions like an amphitheater, an underground lake that may be explored with paddles and rowboats, a Ferris wheel, spa treatment rooms with natural aerosols, bowling alley, mini-golf, sports field, table tennis, pool tables.Read more