My IKEA is better than... my IKEA

I love IKEA. I have loved it forever, since long before Jeremy and I ever dreamed of taking a sabbatical at all. When the girls were little, we used to go to the IKEA in Mission Valley, San Diego, for lunch on Tuesdays (Kids Eat Free!). The girls would play in the Småland play area while I drank coffee and looked at the interwebs, then we'd scope out the kids furniture area and they'd play with whatever they could get their hands or bodies on.

Little did they know they'd be moving to Sweden someday.

Here in Tjärnö, my nearest IKEA is about an hour away in Uddevalla. It makes my IKEA at home pale in comparison. My Swedish IKEA has it's own freeway exit. It's ginormous.

This photo doesn't do it justice, but there it is!

The Småland here is bigger, has cooler stuff to play with, and accepts kids by age rather than height. I couldn't take any photos of it because of a sign that said fotografering förbjuden, (Swedish is so easy sometimes!) but trust me that it's better than the tiny playroom in San Diego. Oh, and this IKEA has an outdoor play area, too.

The restaurant is mostly the same as any IKEA you've ever been to. Except better. In addition to the minimalist tables and chairs that populate every IKEA restaurant, this one also has a variety of more comfortable and stylish places to sit.

Not the couch area. This is the restaurant seating!

More couches! And comfy chairs! And pretty lamps!!!

There are a lot of desserts. And they're all beautiful. Plus, they have a cooler full of free popsicles for the children. What child doesn't want a free popsicle? What parent doesn't want to give their child a free popsicle???

Don't remember seeing chokladbollar in San Diego.

Famous Swedish kanelbullar

Apple pie... covered in cream.

The store itself is the same as any other IKEA you might visit, just more capacious. And with MUCH cleaner, nicer bathrooms.

Then you get to the warehouse area. The best analogy I can give is that it reminded me of that scene at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie, where some old worker wheels the crate containing the Ark into a big government storehouse and as the camera pans out you realize the place is palatial. The IKEA warehouse here is like that.

It just goes on, and on, and on...

It's like four stories tall!

I can't understand how it is still considered "self serve" when no one could possibly reach past the first level without help.

And last but not least, no store of any kind in Sweden would be complete without self-serve, pay-by-weight candy bins. This definitely does not exist at my IKEA back home.

Try the vanilla fudge and the watermelon and peach gummies.

I'm still happy to have an IKEA in San Diego, so that when we're back home at least I'll have a very Swedish place to drink strong coffee, eat meatballs and potatoes, buy white and grey decor for my home, and reminisce about living in Sweden. But I'm not looking forward to how shabby and second-rate my home IKEA will feel in comparison to my totally legit IKEA here.