Up early, Sharon and I finished packing up the room and then checked out. I tried to order an UberXL, but gave up and had the hotel order a cab. We pulled away from the hotel before 8 am. It took us about twenty minutes to get to the airport.Checking in, dropping the luggage and working our way through security was relatively painless. Sharon and I had breakfast at the airport (breakfast sandwich and french toast).
We caught an 11:35 am United flight from Edinburgh to Chicago. Tom, Sharon and I were in an economy plus row. It was a relatively painless flight. I was very comfortable. Using the wireless, I worked on the blog entry for yesterday. Afterwards, I read my book [Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears].
We were on the ground just after 1 pm, but it took almost thirty minutes to taxi to the gate and start to unload. We walked straight into a giant mess. There were so many people trying to get through passport control that they formed a line back towards the gate. After inching forward for about an hour, I downloaded the mobile passport control app and entered our information. We jumped into that line. We got to a point about 10 or 15 people away from the agent, but got stalled. We ended sitting in one spot for almost 30 minutes. I got pretty frustrated. In total, it took us almost two hours to get through the passport control.
Tom used Global Entry and was way ahead of us. He collected all of the luggage and waited. We rechecked our luggage. In this area, there were probably a hundred people trying to rebook their flights; they had been in passport control so long that they had missed their connections.
Leaving the International Terminal, we took a train to Terminal 1. Going back through security was fairly quick with CLEAR and TSA PRE.
It took us over three hours to get through passport control and into the terminal where the gate for our connection was! Luckily, we had a six hour layover...
After wandering the terminal, we ended up having dinner at the Wicker Park Seafood & Sushi Bar at one end of the C Concourse. Although having airport sushi seems like a bad idea, Sharon and I split miso soup, adamane and tidal wave and red dragon rolls.
Our flight to Sacramento left about thirty minutes late at 8:40 pm. Although I consider sleeping my superpower, I usually have a hard time sleeping on planes. This time, I was asleep before we took off; I don't remember the plane taking off. I slept about three hours of the four hour flight. We were on the ground about 10:50 pm.
Eric picked the three of us up. We were home in Carmichael just before midnight.
It was almost exactly twenty-four hours door to door.
[Note to self], we are getting Global Entry before our trip in September.
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