We first had to make our way from San Francisco to Edinburgh via Chicago and Manchester. Believe me, this was a major feat in itself! Our flight was delayed for a half hour because all passengers were on board but we had no pilots. Seeing that we only had an hour and a half connection time, this was going to be tight as it was but life continues to throw up obstacles. We were originally scheduled to land only 20 minutes late but at one of the furthest gates from our connecting gate. But we landed only 15 minutes late at a "closer" gate but still in a distant terminal.

Once on the ground, most people on the flight who didn't have a connecting flight stayed seated so that the poor souls who had to make the mad dash could get a head start. We heard this old guy mumbling the same gate that we were headed to so I asked him if he was going to Manchester and he was. I felt better because we were in much better shape than he and his Mrs. were so we felt that if he could make it, we would make it to.

The doors open and we start running down the terminal asking people along the way, then discovering their way was totally wrong and finally retraced our steps and asked a TSA agent. He told us, right at the dinosaur, take the lift down one floor, exit, take the lift up two floors and cross the bridge to the inter-airport train system. After this we saw the old couple running so we grabbed them with us and the four of us found the train. We were stopped at the international terminal by a staff member and she was barking orders to open the doors back up because now there were about 10 passengers who had just arrived (the four of us + others on the train). We were on!!!!!!

... our bags were not...


On the way back, silly us, we'd only allowed 1hr 30mins to do the same thing as before but this time it included immigration. We were on the plane thinking, that's it, we're done for. We docked at one of the furthest gates from our connecting gate (of course!) and then when we got off the plane, we decided to run to immigration. If there were long lines, then we'd just try and hop on another flight. As we approached immigration, we saw... no-one. Absolutely no people were waiting in the immigration hall. We had run and become the first people in both our lines! Amazing. We ended up making it with 5 minutes to spare. Had we missed that flight, it would have been a long wait. The Democractic Convention was happening in Denver that day and Obama was speaking the next day. So it would have been a long wait on standby.

My advice is, leave plenty of time for transfers Chicago O'Hare airport. Or just avoid it at all costs like we will.