Odesa: Getting there & around

Odesa is better linked to Europe than any other Ukrainian city besides Kyiv. There are international connections to Vienna and Istanbul while LOT and Malév offer flights five or six times a week to Warsaw and Budapest. There are four to five flights a day to Kyiv.

From the passenger port there are regular ferry services to Istanbul, plus some to Haifa and Varna in summer.

Odesa is also a terminus for the Dnipro River hydrofoils and passenger boats and summertime catamarans from Yalta and Sevastopol. Eugenia Travel can help in all instances.

Odesa's long-distance bus station (tel: 004; vul Kolontaevska 58) is 33km (2mi) west of the train station. Take tram 5 heading away from Arkadia to the other end of the line. Alight in this dingy neighbourhood, walk towards the front of the tram and take the first street right, then look for the coaches down this street.

There are at least eight buses daily to Kyiv, stopping en route at Uman. Autolux (www.autolux.com.ua) runs four services daily. The exact journey time will depend on whether the new highway to Kyiv has finally been completed. With Autolux, count on roughly four or five hours to Uman and seven or eight to Kyiv. Other buses head for Simferopol (12hr, one daily), Zaporizhzhya (12hr, two daily) and Dnipropetrovsk (10-11hr, three daily).

There are at least nine daily buses to Chişinău (5-7hr). Call Arman Tours (tel: 728 9518, 245 161) for bus journeys to Istanbul or Prague. It has an office upstairs at the train station.

From Odesa train station (pl Pryvokzalna) there are three overnight trains to Kyiv (9-11hr), plus daily trains to Dnipropetrovsk (10hr), Kharkiv (14hr), Izmayil (8hr) and Simferopol (13hr).

Longer-distance services go to Minsk, Rostov and (summer only) St Petersburg. There are also trains to Chernivtsi and Lviv, but most pass through Moldova, for which a visa is required. If you have a visa and want to reach Chişinău, there are three trains a day (4-5hr).

Odesa airport is about 12km (7mi) southwest of the city centre, off Ovidiopilska doroha. Bus 129 goes to/from the train station; bus 101 runs to/from pl Hretska in the city centre.

To get to the centre from the train station (which is about a 20min walk), there are several options: bus 137 and 146 pass the train station en route to pl Hretska. Bus 155 and 109, and trolleybus 4 and 10, go up vul Pushkinska before curving around to vul Prymorska past the passenger port and the foot of the Potemkin Steps. Tram 5 travels between the bus station and Arkadia beach. It passes by the train station en route, but misses the city centre.

Taxis in Odesa charge incredibly high prices (because the rough streets destroy their cars, one driver told us). Never catch a cab in front of a hotel if you can help it. Try Elit-Taxi (tel: 371 030) for a reliable service.