The Ikea Experience

From A:

J and I went to Ikea for the first time this weekend.  This was no ordinary shopping trip, it was nothing less than an experience all its own.

The parking garage entrance.
We parked in row L.

Before we knew what we were getting ourselves into, we made our way to the garage entrance... then up a flight of stairs... then up an escalator... then to a lobby with a restaurant and kids' play area.

The main entrance.
Nobody actually uses this because it's really far from the parking garage.
Unless husbands use this entrance to drop off their wives and go watch football.

Once inside, we had a choice of whether to go to the "showroom" or the "marketplace."  Not knowing what we were doing, we walked into the showroom.  We apparently went the wrong way because everyone else in the store was walking towards us.  We were swimming upstream in a sea of home furnishings!

Anyway, the showroom has a bunch of rooms set up using all Ikea furnishings.

J liked this kitchen in the showroom.
I thought it looked a little small.

And no, the rooms aren't miniaturized.  The mini kitchen is meant to be a child play area.

We saw kitchens, bedrooms, closets, offices, living rooms, etc.  There were even bathrooms.  The main theme of the store is how to make the most of small living spaces.

How to fit enough stuff in a small bathroom to make it usable. 

This has to make you wonder if there's been problems in the past.

After we finished in the showroom, we went downstairs to check out the marketplace.  The marketplace is a huge, one-way store with racks and bins full of all the smaller items that were showcased in the showroom.  After walking forever through a ton of smaller items, you end up in a huge warehouse where all the bigger, assembly-required furniture is kept.

And then at the very end of the store is the checkout.  Thank goodness we didn't find anything to buy because we would have been waiting a very long time.  It's all self-checkout with the help of a few employees assigned to the area.

That was it - except for the refreshment area on the way back to the parking garage - brilliant!

Our condo is pretty well set up, so there wasn't really anything that we needed.  But we enjoyed looking through the store and getting the full Ikea experience.