Shopping Anyone

The day that Claire had been waiting for had finally arrived. Our first stop of the day was IKEA. We arrived as the door opened to ensure ourselves enough time for this and the Mall Of America. I had never been to IKEA before and by the excitement in Claire's actions I was afraid for our bank account. For those of you that have never been to and IKEA before let me run you through a basic operation of the entire deal.

When you enter the store you grab a big yellow bag to carry around on your shoulder, an IKEA pencil, and a shopping list. You then are directed upstairs where you start your shopping experience to work your way down. The store has a path that winds its way through different types of home furnishing areas. From kitchen, living room, bathroom, home decor, lighting, on and on anything is available. Along the way they also have entire show rooms from houses set up with different types and sizes of rooms. Here they display all the things that the store has to offer. If you like something that you see on the show room floor or in one of these houses you write down what it is on your shopping list. Then after you have walked though the few levels of the store you enter the warehouse where you are directed to the shelf your item is on. After picking it up the cashiers are waiting just beyond the warehouse. It is a pretty smooth process and I have to admit it was fun to walk through and see all the different styles and designs for the many rooms of a house. Claire ended up taking it easy on the pocketbook. We ended up getting a couple odd and end things. Because we are in a transition stage as far as our living is concerned we don't really have anywhere to put furniture type things, which I had to remind Claire of on multiple occasions. If we did have an apartment or house we would have probably come home with a chair and a table if not more. After shopping at IKEA which was about 3 hours we dropped our things off in the car and headed back in to have a brunch in the food court. We were able to have a couple Swedish dishes in the meatballs and the Linginberry dessert they had.

Now it was off to the mall. Neither of us are huge shoppers so we were more curious of the variety of things the mall had to offer and not so much the browsing through the stores looking for the best deals. Again for those of you that have never been to the Mall of America it is set up in a square with all the stores located on the outer part of the square. Then in the middle is the amusement park. Claire and I started on the first floor, there are three floors with a movie theatre on the fourth by the way, and just started walking around. We went in and out of a few stores but like I said we were just looking. About half way around we headed into the amusement park to get a closer look on the rides and games that were offered. We were shocked to see that just about any kind of ride or game you can think of is in the mall. They have roller coasters, log rides, Ferris wheels, swings, fun houses, and much more. We had a good time walking around watching all the kids having a great time. We also walked in a place called Lego Land where everything was made entirely of Legos. The highlights of Lego land included a beach ball size Death Star from Star Wars, a larger than life Batman, our personal favorite a two story grandfather clock. After many ows and ahs we decided to by a key chain that looked like a Lego man because we needed a key chain and it was something fun to remember the mall. We decided on a Lego man that looks like Harry Potter. From here we simply walked around and browsed the stores along the way. After another quick bite, the final store on the third floor behind us, and 4 and a half hours later we were ready to call it a day.

By now it was around 5 in the afternoon and we were wondering how far away from the city we should go before finding a hotel for the night. It was sometime around here when the idea of driving through the night and just getting home hit me. After a quick search online curiously of a nearby hotel we found that we were 10 hours from home, we could do it. So jumped in the car and headed home. We wanted to avoid the craziness of Chicago so we headed south into Iowa where we then cut our way back towards Indiana. After a late dinner in the car and some direction navigation, Claire went to sleep around 12:30. I plugged in my IPod and headed for home. For the next 4 hours it was nothing but semis and headlights. After crossing the Indiana line while stopping for gas Claire woke up and kept me company for breakfast at McDonalds and the rest of the ride home. By the time we arrived in Bloomington I had been awake for about 23 hours. We went straight to bed. Hey we needed our sleep we had a Harry Potter date at midnight that night.