We decided last night that we needed to go to Evry, 330 Km north towards Paris to the IKEA there to acquire some new curtains and associated frilly things and other misc. items for the house. It was certainly a good idea as we were up til after 12 with our evening guests for a 6 course dinner featuring the same pork stuffed with garlic and fennel that we served last week with a sauce made of blood orange juice, sugar, carrots sliced to serve as a side vegie. The first was a basil/walnut pesto witrh alsacian noodles that looked like bucatini but was egg noodle based. Quite a hit but I think difficult to eat as the noodles were somewhat too thick and were springy. Thus messy and difficult to get a fork full. Italian bucatini or fettucini would be a better choice. A cheese course was stilton, tillamook white cheddar and a delicious soft goat cheese rolled in cracked pepper with toasts brushed with olive oil. I made strawberry ice cream with fresh sliced strawberries over the top, very good. Then we dove into a few of our collection of desert wines. All in all a very nice dinner that came off well as we are fast becoming expert at this art.
The trip to Evry was an easy 3 and a half hours until the last 2 kilometers which made us lost and confused, each roundabout led to another and the signage was terrible as usual. One IKEA sign at the first roundabout was reassuring but French signage is just not adequate to the task at hand. Not enough signs and not enough information either, and more often than not no distances are given. So we wandered about the area, roundabout to roundabout hoping we'd get a hint break and sure enough! A HUGE blue building appeared and it was our IKEA waiting to be assaulted by two Californians in search of bargains for the Grande Maison.
3 hours and three hotdogs later we exited the store with the following:
12 pair of 3 meter long white frilly curtains that the French use as both decoration and to shade a room from excess sun.
1 set of actual curtains of a dark grey velvet for our bedroom.
100 white plastic clothes hangers
4 Wicker Chairs for outside seating.
4 Cushions for same.
Big blackboard for the kitchen.
A lampshade.
2 packages of flourescent light bulbs. (total of 6)
4 plastic cutting boards for the new kitchen someday real-soon-now.
2 cheap knives for same. I LOVE cheap knives! They sharpen up real well with a steel and if you screw them up, like I do ocassionally you haven't wrecked a Sabatier or Trident just a serviceable cheap knife. Throw it away and buy another.
On and on to the tune dah, dah, ta, dahhhhh...545 Euros!
That plus the 45 Euros worth of tolls going and coming AND 35 Euros of diesel fuel for the Toyota...and you have one very expensive day at an IKEA. Gads. Thank goodness they don't have one nearer to us and we only go once every 4 years.
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