Ullared, Gekås and shopping (17-April)

After a quiet day on Saturday (Alana and Kris went to a girls day with the other expats and I stayed home with the boys) we decided to go for a trip on Sunday.

One of the other expats suggested Gekås, a huge shopping complex in Ullared - about 2 hours north.  Kris needed some new clothes, so we figured it was worth a shot.

Gekås was founded in 1963, in 2010 it had a turnover of 4.2billion Sek - 670million AUD.  It has a store area of over 30,000 square meters and 50,000 square meters of stock storage.  Over 4.5 million visitors come each year from all over Sweden, the record in 29,500 in one day.  The average visitor drives 150km to get there.

The center is mostly a single store (Gekås) that sells clothes, furniture, food, electronics, toys, sporting goods etc.  There are also outlet stores and the site is serviced by a caravan park and camp site.

So on we went shopping... You can guess how excited the kids and I were, but it ended up being a great day and an interesting experience.

Looking out over one of the carparks

More carparks

Heading into Gekås

Shoe Shop and Hobby Shop Outlet stores outside the entrance

Getting a trolley in the rain - looking down the side of Gekås

I love crowds, my knuckles weren't white on the trolley - honest

This section was bathroom products - and it was BUSY. I tried to show the depth of the store with this shot, its huge!

Alright - where are we?

Shopping for lollies - kids reward for behaving

Clothes shopping

Trolley jam!

We stopped at a food court after for a meal - Kris and I got kebab plates and the kids got nuggets.  At one point Cameron stopped and said "I think I just ate a bit of my fork."  Sure enough the left most tine was a little shorter -

The offending fork

We finished up with some new clothes, a couple of board games and some speakers for my computer.  Overall the shopping was not as painful as I expected...  The traffic jam 20 minutes out of Malmö was.

There'd been an accident and we were held up for over 45minutes while they cleared it.

The jam

Alana proved comic relief, by using a straw as a mustache and waving it at the cars next to us - she had them in stitches.

Overall it was a long day but we survived.  My biggest disappointment was the fact that  most of my steps didn't count on my fitbit as I was pushing a trolley.