Odessan Beaches

Arkadia beach promenade--the most popular and by far the best maintained in Odessa. This is the lovely path down to the beach.

The Odessan beaches are nothing to write home about -- so I will keep this short. I wouldn't recommend booking your next holiday by the sea here unless you enjoy combing your toes through grains of sand, glass, a variety of trash. Or relaxing among broken slabs of concrete and dilapidated sanatoriums (formerly exclusive soviet relaxation resorts), crumbling sea walls and rundown cafes. I think I forgot to mention the large cat size rats that move amongst the concrete rubble. Irregardless of the state of the beaches it seems that most people head down to the sea on warm days and strip off their street clothes and sunbathe in their underwear (or less) and peacefully soak up the sun.

Sewer water..I believe...pours out onto the beach. But there is an inviting fountain nearby to distract you from this.

I sat on a crumbling wall at the beach with the intentions of doing my homework the other day. It was warm and the place was packed, so I ended up just people watching. The scene that unfolded in front of me was quite interesting: handfuls of people sunbathing, others swimming, some fishing from the breakwater, people relaxing in the cafes overlooking the beach, 2 girls on mtn bikes rode up, took off all of their clothing (except sunglasses) and relaxed near the rocks right in front of the outdoor cafes, an old man walking his dog, lots of folks strolling along the seaside walkways, a young couple comes down to sit on the seawall, they completely remove each others tops and proceed to heavily make out and grope each other, meanwhile a small child about 5 ft away plays in the sand...it was quite an random scene of people minding their own business.

Arkadia is by far the cleanest and most popular beach with relatively clean sand, nice outdoor cafes--and apparently in the summer some outrageously sleazy open air clubs with thumping music until dawn. They are closed for the winter now though...