My First time to IKEA and I acted like a total tourist! Ate a lot of meatballs and took a lot of photos at the fun weird Swedish store!

I walks up to these two employees at IKEA and asked to have my photo taken with them. Who does that?! I did. One guy wasn't really having it. The other was all giggles. But I appreciate both of them stepping in for my historic moment with my nephew as I visited IKEA for the first time. I now understand all the improv scenes from the past that reference IKEA. I thought the meatballs would just be in a bucket by the door next to paper plates. I thought it would be a normal furniture store with nice displays. Boy was I wrong. It's more than meatballs, they got ice cream and sticky buns. They got whole dishes of rice and veggies, coffee, and a grocery section with the necessary, frozen fish! They got free pencils and measuring tape and there's hologram arrows to tell you which way to go. Those were especially useful, cause I was totally lost.

My brother needed a new couch and some things for the kid's playroom. We borrowed the old man's suburban and headed downtown towards the IKEA which has somewhat revitalized midtown in St Louis. Between the Central West End and Grand, the area was mostly left dormant. But over recent years there has been a boom in tech and industry. Entrepreneur Magazine listed St Louis as one of the places to be last year. One reason was Cortex and the Venture Cafe which are adjacent to the IKEA. Kaldi's put in a new coffee shop. And the whole area is getting it's own Metro Train stop next year.

As I said, I didn't really know what to expect. I thought we were gonna walk in and see a bucket of meatballs and shopping carts. I could not have been more wrong. It was a totally different world. Escalators, steel, glass, and light guided us through a labyrinth of displays that were borderline art exhibits. I held us up by taking all these photos and playing with the nephew. I finally had to ask some employees for a photo. I love that one guy thought I was a weirdo while the other one thought it was funny. They were both nice guys. And that's another thing, everyone working there was happy and helpful. Toto, we are not in Walmart anymore.

We wove through the whole juggernaut complex. My brother stalked the right furniture while checking in with his wife via photos on the phone. My nephew and I played hide and seek and tried not to bump in to the crowds browsing the mini city of kitchens, living rooms, and appliances. And then.... the warehouse! It reminded me of the last scene of Raiders of The Lost Ark where they US Gov stores the Ark in a mega storage complex. We finally reached the shopping carts, that were more like go carts than wire baskets. We hunted down our heavy boxes. We loaded them into the suburban. And then we settled down for icecream, coffee, and sticky buns. The brother and I talked a little about Bitcoin and Altcoins and I always appreciate talking about this new thing with loved and trusted friends and family. Then we headed back to his home to put together the couch. When we got home, the momma made some Christmas cookies and did her best to wrangle the lively kids while bro and I followed the wordless directions in putting together their room. The kids got legos, and adults have IKEA.

After everything was put together. We settled down with a beer and some pizza while listening to Christmas music. It was late so I spent the night on the couch. Woke up the next the day in a happy home. I'm still the hobo of the family. I still owe SteemfestDreams a significant amount of SBD. I still have no car, no real computer, phone, and all my belongings are still in LA. I have my critics. But I am infinite wealthy because of family and moments like this weekend where I simply get to do and share something fun and dumb like go to a big ol warehouse of a store. Thank you IKEA! I hope to spend my steem and bitcoins there someday soon!

~Jacob TS