Adler Adventures (Part 1)

These are the Sochi Olympics, but the actual venues of the Coastal Cluster in the Olympic Park are located in the Adler District, which is about 20 minutes by bus/train from downtown Sochi.

From the bridge into Adler, looking towards the mountains

From the IBC, it is possible to walk into the town of Adler in about 30-40 minutes, and a group of us decided to do that this morning after work.  After walking out of the Olympic Park area, you cross a big bridge over a low level river to get into the main area of town.  All told, it is about 2 miles each way.

From the same bridge, looking towards the Black Sea

Of course, I had already woken up early at 4:30pm yesterday to watch the hockey game, and just finished my overnight shift at 9am. By the time we got back to the IBC, and I got my bus back to my hotel, I ended up getting into bed at about 12:30pm (so I had been up for 20 hours), and was due back at the IBC for 8pm.

Hammer and Sickle logo on bridge pillars

Once you cross the bridge, you turn on the first road towards the Black Sea, and enter a market area and square with lots of shopping opportunities.

The main square in town

There were lots of little shops with tons of tacky Olympic souvenirs, and a few shops with much higher end merchandise.  Nobody speaks much English, but all the prices are clearly marked in Rubles.

Souvenir shops

A ruble is worth about 3.5 cents Canadian (at least with the exchange rate I got before coming here).  I brought 8000 rubles, which cost about $292 Canadian.  So 1000 rubles is about $35.  Everything is very expensive here.  Beer at the hotel costs 250-500 rubles (so about $8.75 to $17.50!).

Pancakes, I think?

On the other hand, prices, especially for food, are much lower outside the Olympic sphere.  We bought a nice big piece of steaming fresh bread (like a French or Italian bread) to share between the group of us on our walk, and it cost only 35 rubles (about $1.25CDN).

Old cart on display

We walked through this market area and bought some souvenirs.  I got a hat for Connor, and found some Figure Skating pins (that I was unable to find in the Park).  Then we headed down towards the beach on the Black Sea, which took us through a food market.  I'm going to show both of those areas in separate posts.

Walk along the river

On the way home, we walked along the beach and then up the river until we found a bridge to cross (a different, smaller bridge than what we came across on).

Looking up the river from the smaller bridge

The river is nearly dry, but is quite wide.  What we suspect is that this river carries run-off from the mountains to the sea in the spring time, and is probably much fuller then.

Residences on Olympic Park side of river

We wound our way through the residential area on the south side of the river, and found our way back to the road leading back to the Olympic Park.  Everybody has been very concerned about safety and security, but I never felt uncomfortable on our walk.

More posts on the market and the beach area to follow.