Cheapflights.ca Explores the Underworld

TORONTO, ON--(Marketwired - Jan 21, 2015) - When the winter winds howl, the thought of being outside is sometimes more than we can bear. Fortunately, there are some fascinating places to retreat to underground. The travel experts at Cheapflights.ca, the online leader in finding and publishing travel deals, have taken exploring to a new, subterranean level with their list of Top 10 Underground Cities. From bars and boutiques to bootleggers and bomb shelters, these underground worlds are as varied as the cities they lie beneath.

Duck underground at any of these five picks and enter a whole other world:

• RESO, Montreal, Quebec, Canada - More than a quarter of a million people use Montreal's underground city, known as the RESO network, a day. This sprawling network of shops, restaurants, hotels, galleries, metro stops and many other services runs underneath the streets of the city. This mega underground shopping centre makes it easy for locals and visitors to cover a lot of ground of Montreal without being outside -- a huge benefit in the wintertime. Montreal's RESO consists of 32 kilometres of tunnels spread out over 12 square kilometres of the downtown area. There are more than 120 exterior access points, so if you're downtown, you're likely never far from a way into the RESO.
  
  
• Wieliczka Salt Mine, Krakow, Poland - Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Krakow only stopped mining operations in 2007 after more than 700 years in production. Each year the mine is visited by more than one million tourists from around the world, making it a huge draw for Poland. Over the centuries, the mine was transformed from a series of dark caves into something beautiful. There are carvings, chapels, statues and monuments all carved out of salt. There are about 300 kilometres of tunnels over nine levels, with the first three levels open to the public. Here guided tours that last about two hours, take visitors through the accessible parts of the mine in small groups. One of the best parts for many is seeing the Chapel of St. Kinga, which took 30 years to build and every aspect of which is made of salt.
  
  
• Shanghai Tunnels, Portland, Oregon, United States - Portland has its own underground city known as the Shanghai Tunnels (or Portland Underground). This network consists of tunnel passages linking Portland's Old Town (Chinatown) to the central downtown area. These tunnels were made up of a series of bar and hotel basements linked together and to the Willamette River docks. These tunnels were used for both legal and illegal activities. Today, visitors can take a walking tour of part of the Portland Underground to get a sense of the intricate links and networks.
  
  
• Pilsen, Czech Republic - Plzeň, in the Czech Republic, is home to Pilsen Historical Underground, a unique attraction below the city streets that's well worth going underground for. Once you make your way down, there are 20 kilometres of corridors, cellars and wells that once acted as food storage and, some say, as an escape route in case the city was ever attacked. Another legend posits that there's treasure buried in the walls of the cellars found in the underground.
  
  
• Tunnels of Moose Jaw, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada - The sleepy city of Moose Jaw is home to a series of tunnels that have two separate stories. The tunnels were once used as a means of transporting prohibition-era booze to the U.S. and through Canada. (There are even rumours of an Al Capone connection to all the bootlegging, though that's never been proven.) The other story to the tunnels involves early Chinese immigrants who were forced underground to escape negative treatment. There are two tours you can take that deal with both aspects of the tunnel's history.
  
  

PATH, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Underground Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia, United States; Dixia Cheng, Beijing, China; Setenil de las Bodegas, Spain; and Derinkuyu, Cappadocia, Turkey, round out our list of places to see what is happening below street level. To read the details on these and Cheapflights.ca's Top 10 Underground Cities, visit www.cheapflights.ca/news/top-10-underground-cities.

About Cheapflights.ca, part of the Momondo Group
Momondo Group is an online travel media and technology company that is driven by the belief that an open world is a better world. The group now serves travel search and inspiration to over 17.5 million visitors a month -- plus 7 million travel newsletter subscribers -- via its Cheapflights (www.cheapflights.ca) and momondo (www.momondo.com) brands.

Skygate began the sourcing of complex air-travel data in 1992, while Cheapflights pioneered the online comparison of flight deals for users in 1996 and momondo launched meta-search in the Nordic countries in 2006.

The Group has offices in London, Copenhagen and Boston with a consumer base across more than 30 core international markets but users all over the world.

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