Odessa

We arrived in Odessa Ukraine after 20 hours of flying from Vancouver. Everything went very smooth. We were greeted here with 26'C temperature and a nice breeze off the Black Sea. The driver we had arranged was there waiting for us and took us to our hotel. Confirms my faith in the internet and bookings.....

We threw our bags in the room and headed out to see Odessa, jet lag and all. Very clean but the roads are a little in disrepair, have to watch those ankles for all the cobblestones that are uneven.

We proceeded to get lost, but no worries has we had studied the cryllic alphabet, so picture us at a street corner figuring out the name of the street and translating with jet lag, plus we discovered the street sign had been rotated 90', we did not kill one another, Alan commented we did that well.....

We found the Opera House and the ticket booth was open, now try buying tickets for a certain seat with an elderly women left over from the soviet era that does not understand English, well we used our new acquired knowledge of the cryllic alphabet and wrote what we wanted. Worked miracles, she even smiled at us. So we have box tickets for Tuesday's nights performance of an opera by Puccini we don't know which opera because of the translation challenges

. The opera house is supposed to be spectacular.

We were both starving and had the craving for Borsch. Sat at a street cafe indulging in "people watching" while enjoying our borsch and Ukranian beer.

The people watching is quite something, the young eastern European women dress very suggestively. High High and I mean High pointed shoes, low low cut blouses and exposed tummies . They parade around arm in arm. I am glad we brought lots of eye drops for poor old Alan's eyes.

Well our jet lag got the best of us and we finished our first day.