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March 30, 2002
better homes and gardens
Yesterday I decided to go to Ikea. Not because I needed to buy anything for our hovel. (Living here temporarily it would be silly to buy anything but truly necessary items. I have been debating in my head for 3 months now whether a tea kettle is a necessary item. I have looked at them in a million stores, yet I can still say the answer is NO. A saucepan will do just fine to boil water, even if pouring it out can be rather tricky.) I decided to go just for the ride. Because of course Ikea is located in some far-flung outreach of the city. I just wanted to explore the bike paths that wind around the outskirts of town. I love that at every intersection there are signs with meter markings to other destinations "Diemen 10", "Haarlem 20". It was rather smelly driving through the countryside though. I couldn't tell if it was the fertilizer for the fields or just the ditches with muddy water. It was rather odd riding on a bike path that ran along the freeway, while listening to Elastica's "car song".
I ended up at Ajax's ArenA (spelled with two capital A's for the soccer team I guess) which had a shiny new mall next to it. It was an amazing modern architectural feat. I didn’t really spend too much time looking around in the stores though, because all of them were home-design shops. Every shop, and we're talking at least 50 of them, had its own little showroom, boggling the mind with a zillion combinations of how your dream house could look like if you only had the will to slough through them all: kitchens with shiny brushed metal stoves and countertop espresso machines, living rooms with overstuffed chairs and precision lighting, glistening hardwood floors samples and paints in a thousand deliciously tasteful shades. I snapped this photo and quickly left before I got dizzy.
I eventually found the Ikea, looked around a bit. It wasn’t all that exciting having just been to the Vila ArenA mall, I must say the Dutch have outdone the Swedes in this round.
Rowing down the amstel. Part of the scenery on the path out of town.
Posted by shannon at March 30, 2002 12:02 PM