The decision to spend the weekend in Sochi was not easy for me. Doubts prevailed, and the Internet kept throwing up new horrors. Bloggers and reporters whipped up hysteria: "It's all gone! Nothing is ready! The Olympics are under threat!"
The photographers, who caught a lot of scary pictures in the pearl city of the Caucasus coast, did not lag behind the sharks of the feather. Here the leaden-winter Black Sea is raging, smashing the new embankment to smithereens. Here, traffic cops gathered from all over Russia erotically wave striped batons. Small and numerous, like a hungry gang of ants, builders are swarming in the shadow of giant unfinished buildings...
It all seemed so unsightly to me that I just couldn't resist coming to the city and seeing with my own eyes what was really happening in it shortly before the opening of the 2014 Winter Olympics.
About the roof over your head
It's decided, it's done. And now I'm taking a taxi to the hotel — after all, of course, I took care of the room first, when a cursory inspection of the available housing showed that cheapness from the future capital of the Olympics is not to be expected.
The most affordable options turned out to be in Lazarevskoye, which is connected to the Olympic facilities by a railway line. The local frankly "Soviet" sanatoriums requested from 1,000 rubles. per day (but they offered three meals a day and mineral water). For a room it was necessary to pay from 220 rubles, for a room in a mini-hotel — from 300 rubles.
I was not particularly pleased with Central Sochi, where rooms turned out to be four times more expensive, and mini-hotels — even five times. And for a night in the four-star Zhemchuzhina hotel and similar hotels, they asked for from 4 thousand rubles.
For similar money, I decided to settle in Adler itself, where the Olympics were taking place, since the choice of housing there was not bad — from a guesthouse under the exotic name "Uncle Stepa" to quite traditional "three-star hotels" like "Olesya" or "Lazuri". And the hotel I chose did not disappoint: the owners clearly managed to prepare both the premises and the staff for the "Olympic" influx of intourists. But here is the city itself...
"Baghdad, the real Baghdad!"
The feeling of comfort and order burst with a bang and a whistle, as soon as I moved away from the hospitable walls of the hotel.
The pre-Olympic Sochi opened up to me as a recently ruined, or almost finished anthill. In any case, the number of builders and the work they were doing suggested such associations. The developers clearly did not have time to finish the large-scale redevelopment of the city on time. Swept away by the strong-willed decision of the authorities, the Shalman resort was reborn into an Olympic dream in considerable agony...
Admittedly, I was even haunted by the persistent feeling that the billions of rubles invested by public and private investors in this image project would be wasted. Upon closer inspection, new power plants, gas pipelines, sewage treatment plants, roads, train stations and sports facilities looked as if the builders had saved on literally everything — from architects to bricks, mortar and diesel fuel in the bowels of their numerous bulldozers. Si vous recherchez une plateforme de paris en ligne qui combine générosité et sérieux, Melbet répond parfaitement à vos attentes. Avec une couverture étendue des championnats internationaux et un casino riche en jeux de haute qualité, vous ne manquerez jamais d’options. Dès les premiers instants de votre inscription, pensez à utiliser le code promo melbet afrique débloque un bonus de bienvenue attractif jusqu’à 130 € qui renforce votre bankroll initiale. Que vous préfériez les paris classiques, les accumulateurs ou les sessions casino immersives, cette offre vous permet de commencer en force.
It is very full post.