When I planned a girls’ weekend road trip to the closest IKEA, I had no idea our day would revolve around food. On Saturday morning, I loaded up with Garan and K and we spent two and a half hours of a rainy drive to Atlanta for our first ever stroll around IKEA. I’ve heard of it plenty, even ordered the magazine and shopped on-line a few times, but if you are reading any design blogs you know that there is plenty of goodness to be had here on the cheap.
The big blue warehouse greeted us right off of the interstate and we were all a little giddy. I was armed with a little bit of cash and a long list of wishes for the newly painted living and dining rooms. Mom & K really wanted to scope out couches and I kind of wanted to do some mattress testing for SD.
We started out in the Design Showrooms since we had never been before. You can walk around a ton of simulated “rooms” and see all of the products being used. Everything is tagged so you can find it easily in the Marketplace downstairs. It took us a little over an hour and half to cruise this level and then we decided to stop in for lunch. I didn’t expect it to be a gourmet treat, but it seemed eating in the cafeteria was a big part of the experience.
We debated for quite some time over what to get and we all tried something different. Garan had spinach and cheese crepes, K had spaghetti & meatballs and I had something else.
This grilled chicken, veggies and pasta (with gratuitous soft drink) was what I started with.
This half-eaten salad of K’s and huge piece of chocolate cake we all decided to split was what really ended up on my tray. My chicken was cold and the pasta sauce tasted like pureed broccoli. To be fair, mom & K really liked what they ordered.
If I’m being 100% honest, this was really the best part of the meal. We divided it, but I think I probably could have devoured it all by myself!
Next we headed to the marketplace to do our shopping! What you can see in the picture is maybe 1/8 of the entire store. It is two levels and each level is probably the size of your local Home Depot. It is giant! We were there almost four and a half hours total. Of course, I bought the most and it spilled over into two buggies. They each got quite a few things, but I checked almost everything off of my to-do list for the living area. They don’t sack your purchases, but you can buy huge 59 cent blue bags to carry everything out, so we got three and loaded up the car.
Mom insisted on getting a few parking deck pictures, despite the number of people staring at us like we were from another planet. Just in case you were wondering, being a blogger is kind of like being a tourist. You stick out like a sore thumb when you’re sporting a big camera and taking pictures throughout a department store!
And just to show you how much our day revolved around yummy goodies, we stopped into IKEA’s bistro right after checkout for a six pack of their “famous” cinnamon rolls. This huge pan was $4 and I am embarrassed to say that only one of those bad boys made it outside of a 10 mile radius of Atlanta!
We stopped at an outdoor mall a few blocks away and ran in West Elm and H&M – two more stores we are missing out on in Birmingham. I lust after WE’s catalogs every month and I haven’t shopped in H&M since I was in New York almost four years ago. I didn’t buy anything for myself, but I did get Sophie a new sunhat and Ella got her first pair of skinny jeans and some bubblegum pink ballet flats. I can’t wait to share all of my purchases later in the week, but I’m hoping to get them in their forever home before spilling the beans.
I will be the first to admit, that if I’m ever given 8 hours and nothing to do, it is quite possible I’ll “hop” on over to the ATL again. Any takers?
I realize if you have an IKEA or West Elm in your town, you probably think I’m crazy! So for those of you more “cultured” friends, I’m sorry about all of the gushing.
