Pivo in Odesa

Rich, Mike and Helen in Odesa
Originally uploaded by rtw2007.

We are now in Odesa (Odessa in Russian), having enjoyed a week or so in the Ukraine. We left Lviv and struggled for an extremely slow 500km along the miserable E40 and past endless roadworks to reach Kyiv (again, Ukrainian spelling) in time to meet the family Broadwith who came out to visit for a long weekend. Here Mum, Jo and Rich stayed in the luxury of the slightly Mafioso “Hotel President” – lots of large black SUVs with tinted windows – whilst we camped out in the car park of the rather tired “Rus” hotel next door.

Kyiv was so different to the west of the Ukraine - a big city with nice restaurants and western prices that were a shock to the system after Romania and the west of the country. Suddenly we heard English being spoken again and saw lots of business travellers. We enjoyed nice restaurant meals; wandered around the city; looked around some bizarre caves containing mummified martyrs wrapped up in glass cabinets (which lots of Eastern Orthodox believers were kissing); visited the chilling Chornobyl Museum; and spent lots of time in many, many coffee houses.

After waving Mum and Jo off we zoomed down the excellent E95 to Odesa with Rich, which was rather embarrassing as we had been banging on about how bad the roads are only to find that suddenly they were brilliant. Now we’re here drinking cheap Ukranian beer, having spent the afternoon at the beach idly watching Ukrainian women (who pretty much without exception all seem to be very slim, very well dressed and very good looking). Tomorrow – the road south to the Crimea with Rich; our third traveller for the next 10 days or so.