Today's outing: Post office and Ikea

So Jason, Sofia, Ali and I made the trip out to Ikea today. It was a looooong day! We started our trip at 10:30 with a trip to the post office to pick up a letter and package. The czech post office is different than the post office in the US. Here you have to wait in different lines depending on what you are doing. We started waiting in one line for a registered letter. After finally getting to the window we had to wait for them to find the letter. Yes, find it! There really didn't seem to be any method to how they organize...they looked in one bin and then another and then another and finally came up with it. After that we had to go to a different line and wait to get our package. By the time we walked to the post office got both our letter and package and walked back to our apartment it was 11:30. We then headed to the metro to go to Ikea. Kids are grumpy. Sofia seemed tired, not sure why. Ali was tired b/c she didn't want to sleep for her morning nap. Jason and I figure what the heck, it will be fine. Let's go! We get on the metro and make the long trip out to Ikea. Sixteen metro stops later we get off the train and onto the Ikea bus for the 5 minute drive over to Ikea. At this point we are still gung-ho. We enter Ikea.....ummm where do we go?? (this would probably be easier if we had ever been to an Ikea in the States.)How do we get into the main part of the store?? We decide to get in the elevator since people seemed to be going upstairs and we had the stroller with us and a shopping cart. The doors open and here we are in Ikea!! Now what do we do?? Jason found these pamphlet things with little pencils next to them and we follow the picture directions. We stroll around searching for a bookcase, desk, kitchen table, bathroom trolley, and rugs. At this point Sofia is hungry and so are we so we head to the cafeteria. We eat a decent lunch and continue with our shopping. We decided on a bookcase fairly quickly and wrote down the information we think we need to write down in our little pamphlet. We find a desk we like but it is out of stock. Oh well, we weren't coming back anytime soon so we found another one. We move on and find the cart for the bathroom and the table for the kitchen. We went around and around the store looking for rugs but couldn't find them. We finally gave up and decided to call it quits for the day. How the heck do we get downstairs and who do we give our pamphlet to?? Well, we went for the elevator again since that really seemed our only option. The elevator brought us downstairs but opened on the opposite side from were we orignally entered the building and put us in a whole new section of Ikea. This is great! I pick up a couple baking dished since we left ours behind in the States. We continue strolling and there are the rugs!! yay!! Now what the heck do we do? There is nothing to write down and it looks like we are suppose to take them with us. I decided to search out help. Luckily I found someone who spoke English very well. He explained what we needed to do to get the rugs and the rest of the items we wanted to purchase. We now need a big trolley to put everything on. We go in search of the trolley. We finally find them. Ali is not happy at this point b/c she had pooped so I put her on the floor and changed her. Not ideal but I couldn't fathom trying to find the baby changing room that I saw upon entering Ikea. Now with Ali having a clean diaper and a trolley in hand we went and picked up the rugs we wanted and entered in the warehouse section of Ikea. Now what? How do we find the things we want? An Ikea worker saw the lost look on my face and asked to help. He explained the numbers we had written down on the pamphlet corresponded to aisle numbers and item numbers within those aisles. Ahhhh the light goes on..this is easy now. We start finding everything we want to buy. Things are going well then I hear "mommy I have to pee". great! I leave Jason with our two bags of random stuff and two trolley's and take sofia, Ali and the stroller to find a bathroom. I asked a worker but he didn't know what I was talking about. (I am now going to learn how to ask for the water closet in czech.) I found another mom and asked her. She didn't speak any English but she of course new what I needed. We found our way to the potty and Sofia went with out incident. We made our way back to Jason who had found everything and was in the checkout. After the checkout we head to the transport desk to have all our stuff shipped to us. Yay! we are finished and can head home. We finally get home at 6:30. It was a long day but at least now we will have all our stuff tomorrow and we will know what we are doing the next time we go to Ikea.