Our Cabin Fever Retreat hit a little late this year. Usually we like to get out of time sometime in January or February, this year we put it off until the last weekend of March. To be honest, we probably needed it much earlier though. This year we decided to take a trip to Schaumburg, IL and window shop at the mall and Ikea. This may seem like odd to some, but we love Ikea and really this trip is always about just get away for cheap and window shopping kinda does that.
For a few years, we went to the Ikea once a year and it was becoming a yearly late winter tradition. But we kind of got off that habit over the last two years because of monetary issues both my friend and I have battled with. This year suddenly we are both slightly better, just not better enough to buy so we decided to at least go.
We went to our usual hotel which was still good, though we discovered it was far too busy due to being Easter weekend. Kids were out in spades and we didn’t get to really enjoy the pool almost at all as the kids were hopping and diving everywhere. Breakfast was good however and even though the kids set us back in the pool we still thought the hotel was worth the amount we spent on it by far.
Upon first arriving in town, we stopped by the Wildberry Restaurant for a brunch. This may have been the best breakfast place we’ve ever been to. They told us it’d be a 25 minute wait, it was about 15. We sat down, and ordered fairly quickly, and in kind they brought us our food within 2 or 3 minutes. It was the fastest I had ever been served and we loved it. The food was hot and not under-cooked and just amazing. I had an omelette with avocado, basil, sun dried tomatoes, and provolone cheese. It was a baked omelette which is not usually my favorite but this was terrific, there must have been 3 full avocados in the omelette with big chunks and then a full half plate of hash browns and a side of pancakes. It was an enormous meal. My friend had oreo s’mores pancakes which was a stack of 5 pancakes with chocolate and marshmallow drizzled over it and crumbled oreos on top. Again, great. We were thoroughly amazed by the place and will make it a frequent stop in the future.
After that we went and walked through the Woodfield Mall. I feel like previous trips to this mall have occurred on Sunday mornings (like 10 or 11am), and so again we felt like it was really crowded compared to previous trips. This mall is really quite huge. I find it amazing that living in Madison I live within 2-3 miles of 2 of the biggest malls in the country.[1. Woodfield is the 11th biggest mall, the other is Mall of America in Minneapolis which is the second biggest mall.] We explored many stores in it and made a couple of small purchases. My friend bought a dish towel set at Anthropologie and I bought Munchkin from a Game Store in the mall.
My purchase turned out to be a bust. I bought it so that we could play a new board game for Tabletop Day and when I looked at it, I didn’t notice it was 3-8 people and so we were left short one. There are some alternative rules but I’m not sure how great of an idea it is to do that with your first play. It also turned out at the end of the night that we were just way too tired to comprehend the rules and so it didn’t really work out as well as we hoped.
Once the night was done, we ordered from a local pizza joint a small pepperoni pizza with asiago stuffed crust. it was quite good, though the asiago added $3 to the cost of the pizza and we felt this was a little steep for what we got. Still we were not disappointed by the food.
After soreness and a good sleep we woke up the next day finding ourselves with an awkward time before Ikea opened at 11am. Because it was Easter day, there wasn’t actually much open for the day so we had limited choices. We decided to head to downtown Chicago to see the lake. The drive there went pretty well, it took us awhile to find some place to park that was on the lake but didn’t cost too much and then we drove through downtown Chicago to get back to I-90. I-90 turned out to be insanely busy on the way back for no apparent reason and it took twice as long to get back as it took for us to get there which was odd.
We had a good time exploring Ikea. I got a lot of good ideas I think on stuff I could do to maximize the space of my home if I had some money. I think it gave me a good starting point. I also think I found the bed frame that I’d like to get for my eventual new bed one of these days. It had drawers under the frame and then cubbies behind it. I thought it was a really good use of space which is one of the primary things I am concerned about with my slightly small condo. I am also partially amused with the idea of building a loft in my condo as well but think that might be kinda silly. We didn’t buy anything from Ikea, but we enjoyed walking through it and looking at all the cool furniture and doodads. It is a little sad to walk through and not be able to afford anything but overall, again we had fun.
After Ikea we wanted to eat before heading home. We considered eating in the store because it is just so weird to, but I worried that my friend wouldn’t find anything she liked and I thought their cafeteria lines were crazy so we decided against it and went to Sweet Tomatoes instead. Yes, Sweet Tomatoes is crazy in its own right but the thought of a salad after eating bad the day before was appealing. We also wanted to give it another shot and to be honest we liked it much better this time than our previous trip here so I am glad we gave it another shot. It was a standard salad bar and we did enjoy the salad and bread and desert bar. It helped that this place was not nearly as busy this time as it was last time we went.
I do feel like the trip was a little late, but very much needed and it did help quite a bit. I left the trip a bit happier and more relaxed. Though I didn’t want to come to work this morning, it wasn’t a dreaded thing. It was more of a “time for work, who likes to work” sort of thing that I feel is normal. It was a good trip.