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Odessa apartments: Odessa City Guide 

    Visitors come to Odessa Ukraine for a variety of reasons – the climate being just one of them. Even 175 years’ ago, Odessa’s climate was recognized as being one of the healthiest climates with its dry air and mild, clean breezes. Combine that with the beautiful scenery of that part of Ukraine, plus the long sandy beaches along the Black Sea and Odessa Ukraine seems to have it all. Nowadays, many people come to Odessa Ukraine for its amazing range of shops and vibrant shopping centre along Deribasovskaya Street. A particularly busy shopping center, spread across five floors, plus an additional underground floor, is the Athena Shopping Center that was developed on Grecheskaya Ploschad. Below ground are the Tavria-B Supermarket and Drugstore plus a couple of fast food restaurants and a bar. Occupying the other floors are a good selection of shops, selling all sorts of wares – sports, books, mobile phones, perfumery, cosmetics, amongst others. Here, at the Athena, the prices are low enough to attract the young people and there is a pleasant ambience.

    Walking is always good exercise – especially if you have eaten too well at some of the divine eateries in and around Odessa Ukraine. Whether you walk past the Privoz, or the Naval Museum, previously the English Club, past the Opera Theater and turn towards the Pushkin’s Museum, or take a turn along Ekaterininskaya Street and walk across the Testchin Bridge, past Shachsky Palace and into Gogol Street, you will be surrounded by the past – almost as if you are being immersed in the history of Odessa Ukraine. Even a trip to one of the beaches cannot make you totally immune to the past due to the proximity of the Crimean Peninsula and its relationship with British history. Another link with Britain is Odessa’s geographic link with Liverpool as a member of the World Federation of Twin Cities.

    Despite there being somewhere in the region of 200,000 titles in literature referring to Odessa Ukraine one way or another, what other little nuggets of information can we give to the casual visitor to Odessa Ukraine? The patron saint of sailors is St Nickolas who is also the patron saint of Odessa Ukraine, with a cathedral named after this saint near the port of Odessa. Then, of course, on 1st April, Odessa Ukraine celebrates the Day of Laughter with a city holiday and a range of traditional festivities. There is even the legend that Odessa got its name through a joke – a word-play on the word ‘Assez d’eau’ or ‘Assedo’ meaning ‘enough water’. Back in the 18th century, when the town was being developed, it was too dry to sustain the needs of the growing populace so, during an ensuing drought, one of the townspeople transposed the word ‘Assedo’ and turned it into Odessa!

    Perhaps you feel like submerging yourself in Odessa’s history again – and, when I say submerging, I mean it literally! As the city of Odessa was built of sandstone, there is a labyrinth of tunnels hollowed out beneath Odessa’s streets as a direct result of the mining of sandstone for their homes. The resultant catacombs have been described as being longer than any previously discovered, with the average length being 2,500 kilometers, each tunnel being between 1.5 and 3.5 metres in height. Many of the catacombs are located at around 50 meters below sea level – and, even to this day, many of these tunnels have still to be mapped – allowing credence that God actually lives deep in the catacombs and guards the treasure of Odessa Ukraine.

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