Shopping, Moscow

Found a wonderful site on Russian wooden houses. Actually it’s not about houses as such, but mainly on carved shutters.
Look at this - aren’t they lovely?

There is a very ingenious collage, too – the map of Russia, made of these shutters, only I cannot cut it out
The site is mostly in Russian, but you can always google-translate it. There is a short summary in English
http://nalichniki.com/en/

I understand one can order postcards and calendars, too. If our good Russian tourist authorities had any common sense, they would have published them in millions. But that’s very unlikely.

You can buy a pair of ‘valenki’ in a specialized shop, it would cost 400 – 1000 roubles, depending on decoration, the quality is basically the same.

Address: Moscow, proezd Shokalskogo 67, korpus 2
Metro station Medvedkovo

Open: 10.00 – 20.00 Tuesday – Friday
9.00 – 17.00 Saturday - Monday

The Bitsa valenok manufacturing company site exists only in Russian, try Internet-translation

At the border of the Izmailovsky Park about 200m from the metro station Partizanskaya (NOT Izmaylovskaya!!!), there is a sort of Kremlin Disneyland, where the Kremlin is re-built from wood, very colourful painted. There is a huge organized market with nice wooden sales stalls one after another. Many Matrioshka stands, but also all other sort of original Russian countryside stuff, as wooden art and even animal furs. I think there you get the best matrioshka sortiment in complete Moscow - very many small sales stands. Entrance to the park is free, but is closes at 18h00 as people told me. On the weekend it must be very crowded. During the week it is a relaxed place (I was there on Wednesday afternoon). During the week about half of the sales stands are empty, but anyway you find there a very big choice.

Izmailova is an open air market on the outer skirts of the Moscow Metro map, off the light blue line by the stop of the same name. If is a grerat place for any and all kinds of souvenirs, pirated DVDs/CDs and many other things you could want. In winter it does sometimes close in harsh weather, but many times the people come to sell their goods whenever they can. It closes at sundown.

Absolutely brilliant markets, and absolutely enormous. Saturday and sunday are the best days to go but it is open all week. You can pick up all your souveniers here for a great price. And bargain with them!

As in many areas of Moscow, at Cherkizovskaya are a large number of shops and market stalls where the local Moskovites do their shopping. I go here quite often with my girlfriend and I enjoy walking around.

You can get their by trollybus or by metro (Red Line, Cherkizovskaya).

It is also home to Lokomotiv Moscow, the 2002 Russian Champions. The stadium is the impressive centre piece of this area. I haven't been to see a match here yet, but it's only a matter of time.

Gostinyy Dvor was designed (1790) to be a two-story open gallery for merchants or traders. As funds were made available by those with stalls inside, the interior corridors would be enclosed.

The Merchant's Arcade, as it was once known, occupies the entire block at Ulitsa Ilinka and Khrustalnyy Pereulok in the Kitai Gorod. . .the building itself is beautiful and quite unusual-looking. The Merchant's Arcade, as it was once known, occupies the entire block at Ulitsa Ilinka and Khrustalnyy Pereulok in the Kitai Gorod. . .the building itself is beautiful and quite unusual-looking.

Detsky Mir is children's world in English. It is the premier toy store in Russia.
The building in Moscow was built in 1957 and was designed by Alexander Dushkin. It is located on Teatralny Proyezd. Tel. (095) 927-2007. The store is open from 9am to 8pm Monday to Saturday and can be easily reached from Metro station Lubyanka.

The flea market Vernisage is located in Izmailovo. It's the ideal place for souvenir shoppers. Here you can buy everything from ancient books and modern military uniforms to oriental rugs and fur hats. When I visited the Vernisage in 1990, I planned to buy an old Samovar, but I ended up buying two modern paintings instead.

At nearly all metro stations you will find little kiosks which will sell you everything: nice little things to eat, drinks and all kinds of CD's or music tapes. We found one (at VDNKh station) which sold MP3-CD's with 10hrs of music each for about 3 US$. I read in a poll that on 98% of all Russian computers no original software is installed.