Odessa

this past weekend we went to odessa.
we drove down with our new mate mark and his sweetie daughter (nearly) two year old phoebe. in fact without mark there would have been no trip as it's his car. and his gps. and his kiev driving experience that got us out of the city in the first place. and safely home again.

the boys starting plotting this trip before i got back from holland. last friday was a public holiday here in ukraine. i think independance or constitution day (or something like that.) so we drove down on friday, explored about on saturday and back on sunday. it's around 500km one way. which doesn't sound too bad but with a baby and a toddler lots of stops are necessary to feed, stretch legs, change nappies, run to burn up energy, swap drivers, take bizarre photographs and the like.

mark and phoebe arrived on our doorstep at 7:15am. we were finishing breakfast but packed up, loaded the car and were outta here at 8am. after the obligatory lap of our end of town taking wrong turns and exclaiming "that's our turn!" as it slid by, and "we're meant to be down there!" as we found ourselves on the wrong bridge, we were on our way at 20 past 8.

we arrived in odessa at 3pm. mark had found and booked an apartment for us to stay in. this is a cheaper option than a hotel with more space. we'd brought an esky and some bags of food with us to be self-sufficient. which is just as well because supermarkets are not ukraine's strong point.

the remainder of friday afternoon and saturday morning we walked about the city centre. odessa is much nicer than kiev in terms of scale, cleanliness and trees. it's smaller, the streets are narrower, the buildings are 2 to 6 storeys rather than 8+ while trees line most of the streets and provide excellent visual relief. they also provide much needed shade. unfortunately during our visit the temperature hovered around 40 degrees!! crap! (or for anthony and pia- carp!) the difference may be due to the tourism dollar odessa needs to attract. ukrainians don't need to go to odessa to get dirt and ugliness, they can stay home for that, so odessa is spruced up better.

i have now seen the potemkin steps!! yay! this was something i did want to experience even before coming to ukraine. experience them i did- have walked up and down all 192 steps at least 3 times, pouring with sweat. i always figured it would be cold, snowy even, with fur hats and great coats... hmmm... maybe i'm associating with the movie too much. sergei eisenstein's 'battleship potemkin' that is.
the steps have a wide concrete baulstrade on either side. they really are just bigger steps. locals sell souvenirs or photo ops from here. we saw a guy with a crocodile and a chameleon, a woman with an owl and a guy with a monkey. we did not get photographs with these merchants of misery as we don't think animals should be treated or exploited in this way.
the baulstrade did provide little phoebe with excellent fun to climb up and down. of course, she's too little to actually 'climb' up or down so mark had to lift her up and down. talk about exhausting- 10 kilo kid in 40 degrees! i said to paul that that would be him in a year or so- he physically blanched.

we returned to the apartment for lunch and a nap. in the afternoon we drove to a beach. there was a bit of trepidation about this as the water and beaches are supposedly not so clean or inviting. plus we weren't entirely sure where we were going! oh well. it turned out fine- as most things in life do. we managed to secure a parking space near the gate that lead down to the path to follow to get to the beach. it was a bit of a hike but we found a shady spot on the sand- sharp little broken shells actually. there really are no beaches like our aussie ones... sigh.
percy was changed into her swimmer bottoms- god she looks cute! slathered in sunscreen, covered with her hat and carried into the black sea! what a little adventurer- her first open water experience is the black sea, her first pool is dubai. i think not many aussie kids can say that.
percy was not completely submerged. partly because i'm not sure how she'd take it and partly because we weren't convinced of the quality of the water. we bobbed with the waves with legs, bum and tummy in. she seemed a little unsure at first but with happy squeals from me and encouragement from her papa she ended up smiling and giggling too. she did not like to sit on the shore and have the waves (really tiny ones) break on her legs and stomach, so we didn't do that for long.

on the topic of seas paulie and i have made an interesting triumvirate. we've swum in the red sea, the dead sea and the black sea. neat.
of course you can't 'swim' in the dead sea. we waded and floated and laughed at each other. that was part of our interesting honeymoon thru egypt and jordan nearly three years ago. story for another day.

our return trip was an exercise in patience, "oh-my-gods", "did you see thats?" and rule breaking. but i'll tell you about that later because darling miss is due to wake up for a feed in five minutes.