Moscow Shopping
Moscow is a city with an endless variety of shops. The city has extraordinary boutiques, and huge malls that appear to sell everything Russian under the sun. There are stores for brand names, stores for bargain shoppers, and stores for rare items, pricey shops demanding top roubles for exclusive antiques. There are even vast warehouses for electronic goods, software labels, and DVDs. For shopaholics, shopping in Moscow is nothing but endless fun.
State Department Stores, a familiar feature in the former Soviet Union, have become transformed into department stores, where a shopper can buy everything imaginable, and shopping here can supply most of your needs. These department stores are known as GUM in the Russian language. The most famous Gum in Russia is located in Moscow in the Kitai-gorod area that faces Red Square. It’s a vast, multi-storied structure that is truly dazzling, both architecturally and in terms of the availability of consumer goods. It has 200 stores in all, and worth visiting for the architecture alone, which dates back to 1893.
Among specialty stores, bookshops are a big thing in Moscow, followed by music stores. Visitors to Moscow may also be interested in finding some good photolabs, travel gear stores, and food stores for vegetarian diets.
Aktsia, located at 21/18 Bolshaya Nikitskaya St, is a specialist bookstore for bibliophiles and art collectors, offering antique books, paintings, sculptures, and even unusual Russian inventions.
Biblio Globus, located at Myasnitskaya, #3, in the Kitai Gorod area, is the biggest bookstore in the city, and it offers books in Russian and the English language.
Archi’s Shops, located in the Kuznetski area, offers a wide selection of CDs and cassettes.
Purpur Legion, located in the Zamoskvorechie area, offers Russian and foreign music CDs.
Kodak-Mosfilm, located at Moscow south area, offers the best photographic services in Moscow.
AlpIndustria, located in the east Moscow area, offers the biggest selection of travel gear for all sorts of occasions.
Jigganat, located at Kuznetski Most street, offers a huge selection of vegetarian foods, and it is also a café.