Up the first set of steps (many more to come)
Stroll through the market- look at those fish!
19th-century architecture
Here we are downtown where both outside and inside this courtyard there are all kinds of plasterwork. The courtyard has been turned into shops. It was incredible inside, even if a few statues could use a wash, they have rivelets of black running down them. You see many more buildings that were built in the 1800's as you walk down the streets, most of the city is four stories high. A few streets downtown have been turned into walking boulevards, and many of the old beauties are being restored in that area.
We toured several Orthodox churches, and a Catholic one also, of course you can’t take photos inside them, but they are beautiful inside. One Orthodox Church had a service going on when we went inside, the singing is beautiful. Somehow I didn’t load any of the photos of the churches, one was rebuilt and opened in 2007, after it was destroyed during Communist times, and amusement park was built in its place, one man is famous because he changed the location of it from the area of the original church’s altar, and a fountain in the surrounding park is named for him. There is still an amusement park for children on the grounds of the park.
Garry and the flying cow
Odessa is known as the city of humour- they have a big celebration on April Fools Day. Here is Garry with a cow we found in front of a restaurant along the cobbled pedestrian street I mentioned. We also found some famous bronze statues in a park that had lines of people waiting to take photos with them, so of course we all had to try it too.
the opera house
The riverview boulevard
We walked on down to the history museum, Tanya consulted the students and they voted against going inside so we headed past the buildings, passing a group of police near the statue in front of it with their really big hats (Clay - from Summer Institute- would have enjoyed that part.) Here are two familiar faces for my fellow Summer Institute teachers- Vika (Victoria) and Sofia, in front of a lovely flower bed. There are two more girls if you look in the other photos. The flowers still looked good, but all the fountains have been turned off and mothballed for the winter already. We then headed for the famous Potemkin Stairs as seen in movies, (I am told a baby carriage goes down them in some movie) halfway down the boulevard. Most interesting- from the top looking down, you don't see the steps, only the landings, but going down and looking up all steps, no landings. Then we continued our walk as far as you can see in the photo- past the Odessa Hotel on the pier.
The Potemkin stairs
The wharf
We walked all the way to the end of the pier, checked out the ships, the exhibit of the anchors recovered from the Black Sea and the statue of the family waving goodbye to the sailor. There was a banana boat getting unloaded with a crane by the Chiquita warehouse, it was noon when we were there and the temperature was 7 degrees C, I had to open my jacket, since it was getting warmer (I had layered with a wool sweater).
Jumping up and down
Here is Garry and the whole group jumping up and down on the mother-in-law bridge, which has wedding locks on the rails like the bridge in Dnepro (although there is no water in Odessa to throw the key in) apparently wishes made under the bridge are supposed to come true. Why are they jumping- because the walking bridge is supposed to start moving if you do- and believe me- the photographer it starts waving on the first jump- they jumped up and down several times, and it really waved- check out the boy in the hat watching them.
A skinny house on a skinny street
This house was mostly destroyed during WWII and the story goes, only the front was standing, so they rebuilt but ran out of money, so this is how much they built- it's called the skinniest house (it's sort of triangle-shaped back there.) You can see people live in it, with an air conditioner up there. Check out how the cars are parked along this street- it made the sidewalks rather skinny, but cars could get through with cars parked this way on both sides of the street.
Catherine and friends
Here's Tanya and all the gang in front of the Catherine the Great Statue, just below her, are her famous nobles, and in front of them on the steps are Tanya, the group of girls, and two guys who came with us to Odessa. This monument is a recreation of the original, which stood on the same spot and was destroyed in 1920.
Partisan catacomb tour/museum
We ate lunch at a Puzata Hata on the sixth floor of a downtown mall- we took the elevator up and I was ready to both eat and sit down for a while- it was at least two o’clock. Then we started out walking, and took two different marshuska buses to get to the catacomb tour. It is a museum/tour of the old mine tunnels where the underground partisans hid from and harassed the Nazis during the occupation of Odessa during WWII. It opened in 1969, they raised the height of the tunnels in the second level to make it most is recreated, and few things are original to WWII. The tunnels were formed when rock was mined for the building of the city, there are three levels to the mining, the hardest rock came from the third level, which is now flooded. The saws on the wall were what the miners cut the rock with when it was mined.
At one time you could get all the way into Odessa in the tunnels, but it is sealed off because of cave-ins. It was very interesting, you could see how they lived underground, there were 69 people in this cell, which disbanded after the leader and two others were betrayed and executed. Tanya translated what the lady guide said for Garry and I. Fidel Castro once came to Odessa just to take the tour when visiting the Soviet Union. Dusk was falling as we got a marshuska back into the city.
The end of the day
Since the overnight train was leaving at 10:20, we had something to eat, and headed out and saw some of the same sites again in the dark, the red-lit building is the museum, and the trees down on the river walk are wound with lights, it was beautiful. Garry found a guy with a telescope at the top of the Potemkin steps and checked out the planet (thank goodness we didn’t go down them again- my legs were killing me!) I took a photo of the gang at the top of the stairs.
We headed back to the train station by way of the Catherine statue, some guy dressed as a clown was blowing giant bubbles across the street there we checked it out along the way. I slept really well until 2:30 in the morning, took another Advil for my aching legs (and sore throat- more smoke creeping in the car) and got back to sleep until 7:20. It was a great trip and we'd definitely do it again!
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