Instructions: Shop.Drop

I take the family shopping round

The markets of the world.

~Sears Roebuck Catalog 1934

Today, I met the gang at the hotel and escorted them to the Arbat, Moscow’s main pedestrian shopping street. The weather wasn’t great exactly, but held off from serious rain while we were there.

One would have expected the shopping mania to have subsided after the Izmailovsky excursion, but Mom and Claire hit the first kiosk they saw and started rifling for more souvenirs to finish up their lists of things for people back home. Mom got what she wanted and we wandered off. I returned 30 minutes later and found Chaz and Claire still in the thick of purchasing. Well, I guess that’s what you’re supposed to do on a pedestrian shopping street.

We went a bit further along Arbat, and returned to my place for a rest. Later, we headed to a great restaurant in the neighborhood and dined like royalty on blini and caviar. Really opulent, really delicious – that’s probably the most I’ve eaten in a single sitting in Russia.