Swedish Shopping

I’m awake at an early hour this morning. The droning sound of the two vacuums made sleep difficult. I have looked at the water in the pool and it’s getting close to the level where I can shut off the water and the vacuums. The silence will be deafening.

We had a most interesting trip on Tuesday, driving down to Garden Valley to see Zack, Michelle, Rory and Colum. After a short detour; OK, I was lost, but after a phone call to Michelle we were back on track and made it their house about ten minutes later. What a great house! And the location; in a very private valley with wonderful views. We had a tour of the property and then spent some time with Colum, of course! A happy baby. We also had a chance to see Zach’s artwork and his studio. Great stuff! Michelle says he will soon have a website to display it on-line.

Later in the afternoon, we made our way down highway 193 to Placerville. Now that’s a road I wouldn’t want to take every day. And Placerville was a traffic nightmare, with detours and construction everywhere. The town has always been a major stumbling block for traffic on US 50 and it hasn’t changed a bit. We found a hotel and had dinner at Jed’s Grill. Very good dinner with a great Chili Verde plate.

We slept in. Unbelievable! It was 7:45 when we woke up. After getting packed up, we went into town for breakfast at the Buttercup Pantry. A little pricey, but it was good food.

Afterwards, we headed down the hill (US 50) and into Folsom, where we encountered a dead stop on the freeway. Just an accident, one car totaled and two others damaged. It looked like someone, or two or three were following too close; that seems to be the regional pastime, getting as close as possible to the car ahead of you. In this particular case, the car in the middle was totaled by being caught in the vehicle sandwich. No one hurt.

By 10:30 we were pulling into the parking lot at Ikea’s.

OK. We’ve been to the mountain top and we have seen the light! We are new converts in the Ikea cult. We liked it; a lot. It took us 3 hours to make our way around the store and we ended switching from a shopping bag to a shopping cart. There were bargains everywhere! But, I think an explanation is in order. This may be a Swedish store, but the products are almost uniformly, all made in China, just like most of their competitors.

We bought an odd assortment of items; a kitchen knife, some scissors, place mats, a kitchen trash can, countertop cutting pads, an alarm clock, etc. etc. What we found most frustrating about the shopping experience was the fact that Ikea had all sorts of things that we had been shopping for during the past few years and they had them at half the price…or less. Drinking glasses were .50 cents each and we had bought some at the Dollar store for, duh! A dollar each. Kitchen canisters, half price. Whenever we saw something we had purchased somewhere else during the past year, we were afraid to look at the price. It was always less.

I don’t know if any of Ikea competitors are looking at how the Swedish giant does business, but they really should. They know how to make the customer feel good. I was even excited about their shopping carts! On our next trip we plan to be there at 9:30 for breakfast; only $1.99. The store opens at 10.