Ikea…..Heaven of Hell?

Ikea is one of those places that is amazing, overwhelming and daunting all at the same time.  Fortunately we have one in town that is pretty easy to get to.  And when it comes to outfitting a flat for not a ton of cash, Ikea is the place to go.  

Ikea is about 6 miles south of city centre so it does take a bit to get there.  (Sounds crazy to say that it's an effort to go 6 miles - but it is unfortunately true.)  Luke had done research a couple days prior on the bus number and what stops we would catch the bus and then get off the bus.  The bus stop is about 10-15 minutes from our flat - no biggie.  Fortunately we both walk fast and made it about 3 minutes before the next bus arrived so we didn't  have to wait 20 minutes for the next one.  Once we were on the bus I had pulled up the map on my phone so we could watch out for the stop.  When looking at the tiny 2x3 screen the map actually looked like it had it's own stop for Ikea - so we abandoned Luke's research and forged ahead.  

Ikea looks like a stop to you too, right?

As we were riding, we realised that we had gone right at the fork in the road which was not on the way to Ikea.  So - being the inexperienced bus riders that we are, we thought "It must swing by Ikea on the way back to city centre" so we continued on enjoying the scenery.  Until…..we came to the end of the line and the bus shut down.  We looked at each other and said "uh oh".  Luckily we had a super nice bus driver who explained to Luke our mistake and gave us return tickets for free.  He also told us which stop we needed and how to get to Ikea from there.  Scottish people are AWESOME!  

After our extended trip to the store, we finally made it.  I've been to an Ikea once before but this was Luke's first experience.  In order to give him the full affect, we walked through the showroom floor so that he could take it all in.  Luckily (I think) it was coming up on lunch time, so rather than spend hours looking at all of the displays, we breezed through the maze taking brief notes and headed to the cafe.  After a nice lunch we headed downstairs to go find everything we wanted.  

Again, luckily, we already had a list of the things we needed so we were able to go to each section and just make a decision.  We found everything we needed within about an hour and headed to checkout.  Prior to going, Luke and I had decided that we would call a taxi to take us and our stuff back to our flat.  Probably the smartest move of the day because our biggest purchase was a floor rug for our living room.  Could you imagine up trying to get that on the bus and then carrying it the 15 minutes back to our flat along with everything else?  Yea right!  

Below are some pictures of our purchases.  Luke's favourites - the lanterns and the shower curtain rod.  (P.S. tension rods are hard to come by around here.)  My favourites - our new knife and the clocks.  They look a little bit silly now but as soon as I can get some plain black frames I'm going to put a map of the US next to the one on the top and a map of the UK next to the one on the bottom.  It makes it really easy to figure out what time it is when we want to talk to our families.

I'm actually thinking about another trip out there soon for a few small things.  I'm glad that I know where my stops are now.  Hopefully I won't screw it up.

Love you & miss you,

Aub, Luke & Luther