Work trip to Chicago

I have been at my new job for 10 months and finally had the opportunity to attend a meeting in our head office in Chicago. I set off in a very empty plane on Monday afternoon in premium economy and I couldn't even touch the chair in front when I stuck my legs out.

There were only 12 of us total in economy and premium economy so we were well looked after with multiple drinks offered around.

I got to O'Hare without issue and through immigration. I was hiring a car from Avis and had to catch a bus to their rental place. I had reserved a 'small' vehicle with sat nav. Unfortunately the only vehicle with sat nav that they had when I arrived was a Lincoln Navigator. This can not be described as small even by American car standards.

I plugged the Zip for the hotel into the sat nav and was dismayed to find that it would take me an hour to get to my hotel. I subsequently learned that the settings on the sat nav were set to avoid toll roads and if I had unticked that box it would have only taken 25 minutes. Even with the snowy conditions and driving a tank on the wrong side of the road, I had no problems driving around all week.

The hotel was nice, with large rooms and a decent breakfast selection. Plus it was only a 10 minute drive from the hotel to the office with a good selection of places to eat and a large Walmart. The work side of the trip went really well and I got good feedback for my contributions.

I also managed to get in a bit of shopping time, I visited Michaels and Joann's after work and got a Silhouette Curio and a lot of Tim Holtz.

I was due to come home on the Saturday evening so I spent the day on Saturday at a discount mall. I didn't find any clothes to buy but it was loads of fun walking through the mall, coming across a random ice rink and trying on lots of pairs of jeans (I found one pair that fit that I liked, but they were $72 - way more than I was prepared to spend)

Then it was time to head off to the airport. After a slight detour to fill up the beast with petrol before I returned it. I had some Chicago deep dish pizza for lunch / dinner as I couldn't come all this way and not try any. I have to say it was delicious. The airport had some funky light installations in the underpass.

Just as I arrived at the airport it started to snow heavily and by the time we had boarded the plane there was a good 2 inches of snow on the plane. We had to wait for an hour to be sprayed with de-icer before we were able to take off.

It had been a long week and I was asleep pretty much as soon as we were in the air and slept for most of the journey home.