Three-thirty in the morning is an awfully early time of day to wake up, but that’s what was required for getting to the airport by 5:00. Our first stop on this journey is Chicago, where we’ll be connecting to our Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, Germany, landing at 7:20 tomorrow morning.

We were on board early with 20 minutes to go before departure. Paying for upgrades such as priority boarding and premium economy is proving to be worth their value regarding their stress relief factor. With everyone accounted for who’d bought tickets for this flight, we were able to depart 15 minutes early. I think this is new to me; I can’t remember such a thing ever happening before.

Hey, wait a second; I thought this trip was canceled. Yeah, well, Lufthansa only wanted to refund $150 of each ticket or have us rebook. Rebooking for early next year wasn’t possible as we have a vacation already booked for Chiapas, Mexico, in March. Booking later this year with looming new travel restrictions due to COVID might not even be possible, so if Caroline was going to see her parents before 2022, it was going to have to happen now.

So here we are at 35,000 feet over the middle of America in the 8th row of a flight that is far from full with no seat neighbor. Now, the trick is to stay awake so we can sleep on our flight over the Atlantic.

Since we’ll be landing in the heart of Europe early Wednesday morning, which is our 10:20 p.m. Tuesday night in Phoenix, Arizona, we’ll be inclined not to want to hit the ground running, but that’s exactly what we’ll need to do. Not only that, we’ll have to keep up that momentum for at least 14 hours so we can go to sleep late enough in the hopes that we can start getting over jet lag as soon as possible. So, if all goes well, we’ll grab a solid 5 hours of sleep on our next flight.

I must have fallen asleep for a moment or two as I’ve got nothing to say about this photo of farmland somewhere, not that falling asleep should have any impact on what I might say. What I should say is that by the time I’m writing this, we’re at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, and I’m feeling a bit worn, using a fuzzy brain to try and say something.

With marijuana legal for recreational use in Illinois, we surmise that these boxes are used by people who forgot they have a pocket full of weed and, before they get in trouble flying into a place where it’s illegal, this is their opportunity to get rid of it.

This is the before photo prior to Caroline enjoying her Aperol spritz as we sat down to some mediocre lunch at the airport. For a place known for its cuisine, terminal 1 is a sorry representation of the city outside the airport. As I finish this first installment of the post for our flight out of Arizona and the United States, we have less than an hour before we board our flight, and Caroline is looking just a bit tired. Maybe my two micro-naps on the way to Chicago gave me an advantage? Anyway, the next image for this post will arrive later, but for now, this is what’s going on for the two of us.

We took off from Chicago nearly a half-hour late, but that seems to be fitting with the O’Hare airport as it’s one of America’s busiest, and while the airport food was on the disappointing side, the view of the city on the lake was spectacular.

We were able to snag a great deal on an upgrade to business class on our flight from Chicago to Frankfurt. Caroline pointed out how this was her first time having champagne on a flight, and while she once flew first class from Phoenix to New York City for work, this was her first time in business class to Europe.

With a flight barely seven hours long, the crew got busy as soon as we were in the air to get dinner service going. Instead of serving the three courses separately, as was my experience on the way from Frankfurt to Denver back in June, appetizer, main course, and dessert were all brought out simultaneously, which was great for me but not ideal for Caroline, who had opted for ice cream as her sweet.

I don’t think it was 15 minutes after eating that our seats were laid down nearly flat, and we were on our way to sleep. While fitful, we were able to sleep off and on for about 4 hours before the aircrew was prepping breakfast. Not thirty minutes later, we were landing in the city where Caroline was born, Frankfurt, Germany. As for the flight in business class, all flying should be in this comfort.