First Look: The New Burbank IKEA Is Ready for Swedish Action

Maria recently hit the new IKEA in Burbank and filed these photos... it's huge. Huuuuge. It's the largest IKEA in the entire country, as a matter of fact, at 456,000 square feet -- nearly twice as big as the original store, which covered 242,000 square feet. (The original Burbank location, which opened in 1990, was the first IKEA in the U.S.)

The new IKEA "will have nearly double the warehouse capacity as well as feature a 600-seat dining area, a children's play area and 1,700 parking spaces, most of which are located underneath the store," the Burbank Leader reports.

We've been eating the IKEA breakfast for years, both good and bad -- looking forward to checking out the new spot. In the meantime, here are some pics from Maria:

"(500) Days of Summer": A Love Letter to Two of Our Favorite Things, Downtown L.A. and Burbank IKEA

For our Friday night date night -- yep, our final date night before Blogger Baby 2.0 arrives (farewell, date night! See you in three years) -- Maria and I traveled to the Arclight in Hollywood to catch a showing of new indie comedy "(500) Days of Summer," now in limited release.

We knew it was a romantic comedy, and that it had been receiving strong reviews... but imagine our surprise to discover it's also a love letter to the Los Angeles you don't see much in film. "(500) Days" stars Joseph Gordon-Leavitt as a lovestruck twentysomething guy living in a downtown loft and working at a greeting card company, also in an old, rehabbed downtown building.

One day he meets Zooey Deschanel's character, who takes a job as his boss's assistant. Soon their whirlwind romance takes them through downtown spots such as the Redwood and the Million Dollar Theatre (which, for creative license in the film, is still a working movie palace); Gordon-Leavitt's character is an aspiring architect who also spends his days admiring buildings like the Fine Arts and the Bradbury.

And then there's the sequence where Gordon-Leavitt and Deschanel flirt their way through the Burbank IKEA. It's always fun-- and a tad surreal -- to see locations where you've spent countless hours, suddenly up on the big screen. (Union Station even makes a cameo.)

As Gordon-Leavitt and Deschanel note in the promo video above, "(500) Days" manages to showcase a Los Angeles as a city, not as a showbiz mecca. As a matter of fact, the film avoids even mentioning what city they're in until halfway through; I kept recognizing things, but wondering if they were doing the typical thing of trying to pass L.A. off as another city. Thankfully, that wasn't the case.

Coastal Journey, Day 3: Monterey to San Francisco

Another day, another institution: The famed Monterey Aquarium. Located in one of the old sardine canning factories in Cannery Row, the Aquarium is well-organized and a great place to bring the Kid Formerly Known as Blogger Toddler. For history buffs, there's even an exhibit on the rise and fall of the canning industry there (basically, the sardines disappeared from Monterey Bay virtually overnight due to overfishing, killing the industry.) Another interactive exhibit goes into detail on which seafood to avoid at restaurants, due to harmful fishing practices or endangered species.


The view outside the aquarium.


Divers examine sea life outside the aquarium.


Our favorite sight at the aquarium: Sea otters swim and hold on to plastic balls.


The back of the aquarium.



After the aquarium -- yes, we had to drag the kid away once he discovered the play area -- we acted on another piece of Chowhound advice and headed up to a small market near the Presidio of Monterey for sandwiches (above). Several people had recommended Compagno's Hilltop Market, and we weren't disappointed. Large sandwiches -- I ate half there, and saved the other half for the drive up. (Maria did the same.) It's a mini-mart, but they did have a few tables out there.

Meanwhile, back on the road, we encountered Castroville -- artichoke capital, so they say.



And they have a big-ass artichoke statue to prove it. Good enough for me.

After that, we sped up to San Francisco, driving through Santa Cruz, heading up and briefly stopping at IKEA in San Mateo for a break (we loves our IKEAs). We made it to the Hotel Intercontinental by 6, and set out to meet our friend Lisa and her husband and son at Osha Thai near our hotel. (Evan, of course, wanted to ride a street car at that very second. It took every effort to keep him with us; he might have ran off to find the cable cars himself hWe wound down the day by grabbing a piece of cake at the Red Ribbon Bakery connected to Jollibee near the Metreon.



Next up: On Day Four, clang, clang, clang goes the Street Car.