Chicago Family Wedding: day 1 - via London to Chicago

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After months of planning we were off to the US for the family wedding of Don's nephew Ben. Chicago is the home of bride Sammi and groom Ben, and Sammi's parents too. We were excited because this would be the first gathering of Don's family in two-and-a-half years, as well as meeting Sammi for the first time.

We elected to fly British Airways in order to fly together with Caroline from London. We met up at Heathrow airport and boarded the BA flight to Chicago.

Considering the London to Chicago flight was 11 hours, we figured to spend a bit of time on the plane chatting with Caroline. As it turned out, Lesley and Caroline were often awake or asleep at opposite times. Ultimately there was a bit of mother and daughter time before landing.

As usual Lesley had difficulty with the fingerprint scanner at US immigration. Fortunately after just two or three tries with each hand she got through. We collected our bags and took a taxi into Chicago.

We stayed at the J W Marriott hotel in 'the loop' where most of the family were staying. However we beat everyone else by a day because others were due to arrive on Thursday. We had deliberately flown on Wednesday because early March in Chicago could be affected by bad weather as we had experienced previously. Also that gave us an additional day to overcome jetlag of 8 timezones.

Arriving for check-in by late afternoon, we were tired from having been in transit since about 5am despite some sleep during the flights. The hotel rooms were very nice, and the concierge had arranged a fridge for us in advance. Our location made it reasonably convenient for shopping, although downtown Chicago offers minimal kosher restaurants. The three of us kept it simple by staying in for the evening.



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