Last weekend we took a trip to Ikea to buy furniture for our new apartment. It was an interesting trip to be sure, full of a lot of driving, and a lot of soreness due to all the walking. I first have to talk about the hotel. I stayed at the Summerfield Suites which was from Hyatt, which I have to say was one of the better hotels I’ve ever stayed at. The room wasn’t huge but had a nice HDTV, wooden floors, a great shower, and cool room decor that was anything but hotel-like. They also had a great breakfast with eggs, french toast, and sausage. All this and I think it was a fairly low nightly cost, especially for that area. I was thoroughly impressed with our stay there.
Onto the real cause of the trip though, Ikea. It was big, really big. I had never been to one before but had wanted to. We walked through the entire store, stopped for a quick lunch, and then went through a second time with a cart to buy what we had decided we would buy. I found a lot of stuff that I think will turn out useful to us in the house, unfortunately I wasn’t able to find the office desk that I was hoping to get out of the trip as none of the desks were what I was looking for. However, my roommate was able to find the dressers and bed frame that she was looking for out of the store and after setting them up at home I think they look excellent.
I do like much about Ikea, however there was some stuff I was not particularly thrilled with. The food for one. It seemed worthwhile going into their little food court, but when we got in, they didn’t really feel like there was much of a choice in things to eat. We both ended up having a caesar salad which turned out to be fairly expensive and not that great. Another thing we came away disappointed in was that we felt that some things were just not explained well, and while we could have gone and ask about things, many we didn’t really think about until we got home. For instance, my roommate bought what we thought was a comforter, but when we got home we found out it was missing the padding in it. We never thought it wouldn’t have this because the examples at the store had the padding and were disappointed that we had to spend extra once we got back just to make it what we thought it was in the first place.
The following day we walked through the Woodfield Mall which was huge. We were disappointed in the LegoLand but were fairly pleased with the Lego store that actually was in the mall. However, we still were unable to find special girl legos which kind of sucked. We also went to the Urban Outfitters which we thought was way better than the one we had here in Madison, and bought a few things from there as well.
While we were there we also went to Cheesecake Factory and Sweet Tomatoes. Cheesecake Factory we thought was really expensive and we weren’t that impressed with their food. Their cheesecake was great but it was like $6.50 for a slice, and while very tasty and we got a good proportion, we didn’t think it was worth the price. We could however see going and buying just a single slice of cheesecake and that’s it. Sweet Tomatoes was more affordable but again we weren’t impressed with the food. It was ok, but not great. I think probably worth the money considering it was a buffet and all you can eat, but not a place we’d yearn for.
Overall, it was a fun trip and I’m glad that we got to go. We mentioned to each other that we thought it would be fun to make the trip once a year during the winter time when we are getting cabin fever. This might be a long shot, but going every other year could be a real possibility and it does have the potential to be a really nice trip. I think if we ever do this, hopefully we can somehow afford to go for two nights instead of one though just so we don’t feel as rushed and can spend more time in the pool. Even if this isn’t a possibility, I hope future trips won’t be as time intensive as now we have experience behind us to know what we are dealing with more. We hopefully won’t need two trips through to figure out where stuff is and what type of stuff is there. The same holds true for the Mall with having some inkling on what stores might be there and worth our time.