The first few months we were here we had a weekly ritual. Every Friday night we would head to Ikea for dinner (Swedish Meatballs, oh how I will miss you) and do some shopping. For the last month and a half, we hadn't been able to make our weekly trip since we were busy having a baby and getting her settled in.
There were a few reason for our original weekly ritual:
#1. We had just moved, and for about 5 weeks most of our furniture and belongings were on a ship making the trip to join us, so we had to have a few things to get us through (bed, couch, shower poofs).
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| Can you find J#3 in the sea of Ikea packaging? (a.ka. our couch) |
The reason for the break? They are expanding their store here in Eindhoven. Of course, I didn't know this until our return home for our non-existent trip there today. After a visit to their web-site upon our return, I learned they are expanding the store, restaurant and parking ramp. This is great news, yes. But, right now they are working on the parking ramp. Which means you have to park about a half mile away and take a shuttle bus to the store. "To Ikea? Where you buy a lot of large packages?", you might ask. Yes, to Ikea. No worries, they do have information on picking up packages on their website. And that is where the title of this posting comes in.
After using Google Chrome (love it!) to translate the Netherlands Ikea website into English, here is the low down:
"Large packages can just take the car to get out of our store. Even if your purchases back to the customer will spend, you can just take the car on our site." Umm, yeah. So I think we could drive back to the store (and just not park there) to pick up the bookcase we were going to buy today. But, alas, a shuttle bus, with a little boy one day short of two and a 5 week old, just didn't seem like a great idea. So back home we went.
When will we return to Ikea and end this "break"? Good question. Unfortunately, the web-site doesn't tell us when the "rebuilding" will end. But I am sure it won't last forever. After all, we feel like we are probably part of the reason they have to expand. After all, for Christmas, J#3 received our third kitchen from Ikea.
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| Ikea Kitchen #2 (in our house in Minnesota) |
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| Ikea Kitchen #3 (smaller, and luckily less expensive and easier to assemble) |
2 comments:
Jen, it is totally a pain, but when I get a night "off", I usually head to Ikea because it's the only place I know will be open. I drink free coffee and read a book. If you buy something big, you give it to a worker on the way out near the door. He gives you a ticket, which you then use to drive in the way the shuttle bus does. There's a loading area by the door. You go back in, give the ticket to the dude, and get your stuff back. I did it once and it took about a half hour longer than it should have. I didn't have any kids with me, though. The remodel is supposed to be done in about a year, a little more.
@Tracey DavisHmm--sounds like it would be nice for me to learn how to drive our car so I can take a night off there! ;-) Thanks for the comment Tracey!
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