Can anyone recommend daytrips/excursions around Odessa, Ukraine outside of the city itself?

Personally, I found a lot of the small villages around Odessa to be dreary and desolate. I would recommend Mykolaiv, which is about 40 minutes by Marshrutka (shuttle bus). It was a major ship-building city in the days of the Soviet Union and was closed to outsiders (including Ukrainians themselves) until the mid 90's. So if anything, you can tell everybody that you've been to a city that was "forbidden" just 15 years earlier...