Swedish Ikea!

We are in Sweden, the home of Ikea. 

We therefore felt it was important to check one out.  Will it be the same as in the UK, Australia, France and the Netherlands?  I did not know what we expected, but it was the same, except all the signs were in Swedish, not just the names of items.

We had a cup of coffee and a cake each, and they were the same products as in the UK.  Not even in Sweden were we tempted to try those indigestion laden Ikea Swedish meatballs.  But plenty of people chose them, we noticed, but they were Swedish, and obviously have stomachs that can cope with the mysterious ingredients that make up the Ikea meatballs.

 Walter read somewhere, although not sure where, that the largest Ikea was in Karlstad.   But I have found that the ownership of the largest, or oldest, or newest, or whatever, tended to be said of many places in Sweden, when in fact it was not really true.   Obviously a sign of inflating one's status in the world.  I will admit though, that the Karlstad Ikea had the largest array of coloured towels in their store.  Towels are obviously very important here, due to all the saunas no doubt.

Our chair, in a shade of green.  I think we may have bought them had they been available in the UK.  Same price too.

 We also visited the supermarket, which turned out to be a superstore, in order to stock up for the next few days.   We found the prices to be the same as Asda, UK.  I will admit to buying a packet of meatballs there, already made up.  I decided not to check out the ingredients on the back of the packet.  I will just make sure we have plenty of indigestion tablets on hand.  We are in Sweden afterall, so we must check their meatballs out, seeing they are a national dish.  They may be an improvement on Ikea meatballs.  I hope so.

After our shopping expedition we decided to return to the caravan, in order to go for a walk, and for me to wash the front and back of the caravan.  The sides look alright, no point in making too much work for oneself.

The beach in front of us, beautiful, if only it was warm and less of a gale blowing. Extremely windy here, we even have some surf, and it is a lake.

 Three quarters of the camping ground is made up season pitches, and some of the sites are pretty flash, with huge caravans and strong, almost permanent annexes.  All of them have decking in front, and some, like the caravan below, have wooden fences around them.  And boxes of flowers

A photograph of more summer sites, with a lawn in the middle.

We do not know what Karlstad centre looks like, having decided to visit that important store, Ikea, the place where tempers flare and marital discussions become heated, instead of checking out the local town which is a tourist resort   One must get their priorities in order.

The wind is really buffeting the caravan.  Going to be a rough night, I think.