Cinci, ho!

Even though it was a three-day weekend, it went by in a flash, felt almost shorter than a regular weekend in some ways, because I spend Saturday on a day trip to Cincinnati. Two friends and I drove down to Ikea and Jungle Jim's. We left around 9am, stopped and ate at Red Robin's (yum! I just love their burgers!), and then headed into Ikea. I know a lot of people who read this blog have never been to Ikea, or don't really know what it is even. It is a furniture/home store, but it is also an experience. It is huge. The whole top floor is a series of rooms set up for you to go through, completed in great detail (books on the shelvers, pots in the cabinets, etc). Most of everything in every room, besides the books and plastic televisions, are for sale (from the curtains to the rug to the lights to the organization divider in a drawer), but you don't take them from the room, you just make a note of it. There are giant arrows on the floor to keep you moving in the right direction. Eventually you make it to the escalator which takes you downstairs, where all of the stuff you saw upstairs and more is actually for sale. It is a lot of fun, it makes you want to clean and organize and redecorate. It is also relatively cheap. We spent about three hours there, and then headed to Jungle Jim's. This was a first for all three of us, but came highly recommended. This is a HUGE grocery store with tons of international and odd foods. We bought crazy cheeses, like Gjoren from Norway that tastes like Carmel, and crazy fruits, like Sharon Fruit and Cactus Pear. We spent forever combing through aisle after aisle of international foods (2 aisles of germany, 5 aisles of mexico, 2 of italy, 4 of Englant, etc etc etc). All three of us spent more at the grocery store than at the furniture store... how is that for unexpected :-)

We then made the 2 hr drive back, in the dark, through the pea-soup fog. Visability ranged from 500 ft to 50. It was pretty bad. We made it back to Columbus at 8pm and went to one of our houses to eat all of our goodies, try all the new strange fruits. Don't eat unripe chocolate pudding fruit, by the way, its caustic and poisonous. We learned this the hard way. (don't worry, we are all fine).

In overview:
(1) I had a great day in Cinci!
(2) Ikea and Jungle Jim's are both experiences, not stores
(3) Drive carefully in fog and you will be fine
(4) Don't eat raw chocolate pudding fruit.