Shopping in Centro

What you find shopping in Centro is in general products of lower quality. Itīs perfect for cheap clothes, fishing gear, key rings, football shirts and so on. The exception is electronics, itīs pretty pricy here since many of the products are imported (the import tax to Brazil is really high), but the best deals and selection are here.

To get there
Best is to go by subway, more detailed instructions on how to use that you get in my Metro in Rio Section . There are two stations that are of particular interest.

Uruguayana
At the Metro station Uruguayana you have a fleemarket full of everything imaginable, a lot of the products are illegal (like pirate CDīs and all sorts of copys), but you can also find adapters, flashlights, mp3 players, toys, surf shorts... From there you have three parallell streets (Rua Alfândega, Rua Buenos Aires and Rua Sr. dos Passos) full of little stores selling cheap clothes, perfumes, tobacco, spices, paint, you name it. This area is all called Saara (Sahara in English) from the association of merchants in the area, the large representation of Lebanese is behind the choice of name. Go to The Saara Area to find out more about it, itīs in Portuguese and has a list of all the stores, a history section and much more. Along the street Rua Uruguayana towards the Metro station Carioca you have several shoe stores.

Carioca
The products of interest here are musical instruments and computers. Along Rua da Carioca going towards Praįa Tiradentes you have several stores selling musical instruments. For computers go to "Shopping Avenida Central" at Avenida Rio Branco 151 map where you have a whole mall full of stores for computers and the assessories.

There is of course more to shopping in Centro than this, but these are in my point of view the highlights.

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