IKEA Murcia

IKEA Murcia Store

Everyone pretty much knows what an IKEA store is and in Spain it’s just the same, the Murcia branch is pretty big and if you have an English catalogue from the UK store you will see they pretty much have all the same stuff, a few things you can’t get and a few extra things you won’t have seen in the UK but not a lot, so you know what your in for. If you are going to IKEA to furnish a holiday home, I would recommend if you have one in the UK near you that you workout what your going for, along with alternatives if they are not in-stock. It really helped us, especially during one trip, when I was on my own without my wife and had to get the stuff she asked for 😉

Unlike in the coastal towns and cities like Torrevieja where you can almost always find someone who can speak English in big stores, IKEA Murcia doesn’t seem to have loads of people who can, normally their name badge will have a British Flag along with level of English, almost always Basic but then that’s almost always better than most British people can speak when it comes to Spanish 😉 Normally the store greeter at the top of the stairs can speak a bit of English and besides everything has the same Swedish names (that half of us can’t say) that we are used to in the UK anyway so your time in IKEA won’t be so hard. We did find at the food counter that pointing and being able to say Uno (One) or Dos (Two) was sufficient to get served but thankfully we have learned a few more words so should be able to at least describe the meat we want 🙂

The time to get to IKEA Murcia from Torrevieja is about 50 mins and going via the AP-7 is the fastest route.

IKEA do a Home Delivery service, as well as an Assembly service, the desk for this is to the very left of the building before you exit, grab a ticket with a number and wait for it to show on the screen. I used the services of a couple of English lads (Jez and Liam) that do removals, DIY, maintenance, painting etc. It cost around €25 an hour for them to drive me to IKEA, load up the van, drive it all back and build 3 rooms worth of furniture and beds over 2 days, best money I spent, as it meant I could enjoy the rest of the week I was out for.

Maps from Torrevieja to IKEA

AP-7 Toll

IKEA Murcia will pay your toll charge for getting to the store if you took the AP-7 and spend €150 or more in-store on that day. What you need to do is keep your ticket from the toll booth (when you hand over your money, wait for the person to hand you back the ticket). In IKEA hand your ticket over to the cashier and they will take the cost off your total bill, as long as it’s over €150.

Note: If your using Sat Nav to get to the store, the road numbers on the A-7 / E-15 got changed, Google Maps has not updated yet and even the IKEA road side billboards you see, have the wrong exit number on them. Hopefully that will be fixed this year.

Special Roundabout Note: Wait until you get to the crazy 6 lane roundabout outside IKEA, you go all the way around and its not very clear what of the 5 potential exits you take, it’s the 2 that look like a side road on the left of the exit you should take and not the 3 that will lead you back to the motorway, so keep that in mind. Oh and what lane should you be on when you go all the way around, in the UK I would have said the outside lane but at this round about, everyone is cutting across each other, so really pay attention on this one, makes the other roundabouts in Spain seem very tame 🙂

IKEA Family Card

Your UK card will not work in IKEA Spain and you will need to apply for one in-store. The forms are available in English but it was just our luck that only the Spanish form was in-stock the day we went and at that time our Spanish was non-existent (we are still learning), however you can download the English one here, fill it in and take it to the store with you. I got my form and card (it’s stuck to the leaflet) from the store greeter as you go in up the stairs, so if you need to complete it in Spanish, just follow the template on the English form you downloaded above, as the boxes are in pretty much the same places however hopefully they have the English leaflet in stock when you visit. On your birthday you may get an email (in Spanish) saying “Feliz Cumpleaños” and inside you may get  something like Free Meal at the IKEA Restaurant and money off, in 2014 I was sent this email along with €9 off (if you spend €90 in-store) and you had 30 days to claim it. Clearly this kind of promotion may stop or change at any time.

IKEA Food

The food is ok, if a little over priced, however on certain days during the year if you have an IKEA Family Card, they will give you a €7.95 gift card for eating a meal in the restaurant. When we went it was on a Saturday, however the website is now saying you can get lunch or dinner every Friday (except bank holidays) after 12:00 from the 7th Jan to 31st Aug 2014. It’s only valid one time per day and per IKEA Family card. Now I don’t know if this was a mistake but we bought 4 lunches, handed over our IKEA Family card and they handed back 4x €7.95 gift cards to us, so either we got lucky or it’s per meal you order, if anyone else has done this let us know below, otherwise I will update you the next time I go on a Friday (I don’t need anything else right now LOL).

Also watch out for IKEA running a kids Word Hunt game, it’s pretty easy even if it’s all in Spanish. You find a letter in one of the highlighted departments as you go around the store, now the department names are all in Spanish but if you pick up the English IKEA Map, you can compare the name to the Spanish IKEA Map and you will know where to find them. At the end the kids that complete it get a free kids meal from the Bistro counter (aka the Hot Dog counter) it comes with a toy and a drink and is completely free. Now we don’t know how often this happens, we were in on a weekend before Christmas so might have been just a Christmas special game but if a greeter try’s to hand your kids a bit of paper with boxes on it, then you know what it’s for, be sure to ask for one for each kid, sadly for Parents you can’t take part in getting the free food 🙁

Children’s Crèche

This if for younger children, you can leave them for 1 hour and go do your shopping. They are super strict on the height, my son at 6 just about gets in however I suspect he will have grown past the 124cm limit, they also have a lower height limit of 95cm.. remind your kids not to stand tall on Tiptoes, plus take their shoes off if they are close to the line. Now you need ID to put your children in and take them back out of the Crèche, your driving licence or passport is what they are looking for. The staff in the Crèche only speak Spanish, so your children will need to be happy to play without needing any help, my son couldn’t at the time speak any Spanish but didn’t care and went in happily two different times, he did say the Spanish boys were a bit rough, i.e. throwing stuff about and chasing each other etc, the staff accept this as normal and just let them get on with it but I am sure they would break it up if they were to knock lumps out of each other, I hope LOL. You will need to complete a small form called an “Impreso de Admisión” as you can tell from the name, this is also only in Spanish. But your in luck, I have made a scan of it and explain in English what you put in each box.

Web: www.ikea.com/es/es/store/murcia/