A very long day leaving Napier at 11.30 am and arriving at my hotel in Chicago at 10.45 pm. The trip lasted just over 28 hours but this did include waiting times at airports.
The trip over the Pacific was fairly smooth after a short very bumpy spell early on. I watched a couple of films, San Andreas and Terminator Genesis. Maybe watching San Andreas was not such a good idea, lol, thinking about where I was headed at the time!! There was a very fractious young boy in the area next to ours and when he cried, he screamed, this did contribute to my lack of sleep! We arrived forty minutes early but, unfortunately, the ground crew did not realise we had arrived and we waited twenty minutes to be let off the plane.
I was first off and first out from passport control, the smart gates are certainly improving arrival at San Francisco. However, my suitcase was one of the last off the plane, lol! As I was following the queue to exit through security, I realised I was being followed. It was one of the beagle drug dogs, he was very interested in my bag and was sniffing it all over. His handler asked me if I had dogs or cats, lol, all was explained and she pulled him away, phew!!
I had to wait about two hours once I dropped my bag off so it was not too long. The flight to Chicago was fairly smooth and we arrived twenty minutes early. There is something about coming over a big city at night with all the lights spread out below the plane, quite magnificent. I caught a GO Express shuttle into downtown to my hotel and it took quite a while to clear the airport. The hotel room was a good size with a comfortable bed.
Wednesday
For some reason, I could not sleep, I was certainly tired enough. So I was up and about by 5.30 and decided to go out for an early breakfast, a very rare event in my life, lol! The sunrise over Lake Michigan was spectacular and something I do not see very often. I found a place that opened at 6.30 and by the time I left, an hour later, it was very busy. After a good breakfast I wandered back to the hotel and decided to see if I could get a few hours sleep before checkout. I managed about three and a half hours sleep but it was just as well that I had set the alarm otherwise I might have slept for hours and hours, lol!
I checked out and then went for a wander, it was a gorgeous Chicago day and very busy. I bought myself a coffee and went and sat in the sun for a while, very pleasant. I made it back and caught a taxi to Union Station. The train was on time leaving so it will be interesting to see what time we arrive. As a point of interest I noticed that the Empire Builder was only running an hour late today, LOL!!
I had to borrow someone's phone to contact Barbara as my data plan with AT&T would not connect to the Internet, grrrrrrr!!
We had a good trip from Chicago, we were ten minutes late into Battle Creek but arrived at East Lansing fifteen minutes early, lol!! I was pleased to be able to stop for a few days.
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