Monday, January 1, 2007

IKEA


Well December 28 will be a day that I am sure Gardner's Mom and Dad would LOVE to forget. We took them to Ikea. If you have never been to Ikea, well, you would never understand this shopping experience. It seriously is in a class all to itself.

Ikea is a HUGE warehouse of furniture, kitchen gadgets, carpets, lights, all must haves and not really needing stuff for your house. On the top floor is like a large showroom. It is like a one way road with arrows all over the floor telling you which way to go. As you look through the show room, you write down on paper what items you are interested in and it tells you where in the warehouse to find those items. On that same floor is also a swedish restaurant.

On the bottom floor is a kids play room (kids 3 - 10 can go in for 90 minutes a day). There is also the warehouse. Man, this place is the same as the show room. A one way road with arrows telling you which way to go. It is a huge maze. And the amount of people is astounding. It makes you feel like every person in Duesseldorf was in Ikea at the same moment.

And if having that many people in there was not bad enough, try everyone deciding to leave all at the same time. This happened to us.

When we first got there, we ate lunch in the Restaurant. There were so many people, that you just keep your eyes peeled for someone who looks like they are almost finished eating and "hang" out around them until their table is free. It is seriously nuts. Well, after eating, I took the three older kids to the play area and then the adults and babies were off to see the show room and warehouse. As we got to the warehouse, we noticed we only had 1/2 hour to shop as the show room took one hour and we had to pick up the kids before our 90 minute limit was reached. Well, we did not find everything we were looking for, but managed to spend 220 Euros anyway.

As we got to our vans, we noticed the traffic jam in the parking garage. We were up on what americans would call the 3rd Level. (here in Germany, the 2nd Level). We were there for more than 45 minutes and the cars around us did not even move. I breastfed Ian while waiting. Then we decided to go back into Ikea as Emma needed a diaper change anyway and we would eat in their restaurant once again. After we were done with our second meal at Ikea, we were sure that the cars would be moving again. And they were.

But to finish off our Ikea experience, we got back to the house and Gardner and Bob put together our DVD/CD holder and then I later put together 2 chairs. Gardner's parents got the full Ikea experience and I am sure they would not mind if they never stepped foot inside another Ikea in their life.

Well, as if I did not have enough fun on this day, I decided to stay up until 1:30 in the morning watching a TV Series called The Amazing Race that Gardner's Dad brought out for us. At 3am when Ian decided to get up to eat, I was hating myself for staying up so late.

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March 2007