Time for a new adventure.  As you may remember from our last blog, the RV is now stored in North Las Vegas. Though we were very happy with the NIRVC storage facility in Atlanta, our immediate future trips will involve the western side of the US, and the North Las Vegas NIRVC, a sister facility to the one in Atlanta, is closer to the start of our new destinations. 

First, however, we flew Delta to Chicago to spend five days, including Shabbat (or Shabbos as they call it there) to see family and friends and also take care of a little business (they also use the word pop with great pride instead of soda).  We’ve found Delta to be a significantly better airline than Air France or Alitalia.  There is more room between seats, friendlier staff, and much better food.  The only negative was that we had to switch planes in JFK airport; the place is a zoo.  We had been told that two hours was enough time for a layover: to go through passport control, pick up our luggage, go through customs, bag-drop our luggage to continue to its final destination, go through security again, walk a long way to wait in a long line for a bus that did not come very often to transfer us to a new terminal (actually, a short three-minute trip once we were on the shuttle).  Two hours was not enough, but as our layover was about three hours, we were fine.  (But to be fair, JFK processes a lot of people per hour.)

Next stop, Chicago’s O’Hare Airport – it is beautiful and comfortable.  No problem getting our luggage or finding the shuttle to Hertz Car Rental.  The problem was in actually getting the car.  We were assigned one group of cars to choose from, but when we got to the car park, there were no cars in that area, so we had to go back to the counter where they upgraded us to the next level of cars, but again there were no acceptable cars to be had, so to the counter we returned.  At this point, we would have been happy to be downgraded to a compact car but no, there was no way they would give a refund for a less expensive car that has been prepaid, so again we were upgraded, this time to a nice car which we liked.

Chicago is the old country to us; it is where we were born and raised.  We spent time with family and friends whom we haven’t seen for years and hit all the points of interest: the Jewel supermarket on Howard Street with its very large kosher sections, Old Orchard Shopping Center in Skokie, Gurnee Mills Outlet Center north of Chicago, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, etc…, but we also indulged ourselves in the local cuisine: Hamachi (Japanese), Taboun (Israeli grill), Emma’s (dairy), and also old favorites – nachos deluxe and tuna melt at Tel Aviv Pizza, burgers from Great Chicago Food and Beverage Co. And we had a delightful Shabbat with family and davening at our old shul, Cong. Anshe Motele. 

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Of course, we could not leave Chicago without having corned beef sandwiches from Romanian.

A huge thank you to Sima’s cousins who hosted us and truly know the meaning of hachnasat orchim.  Thank you – and see you soon, G-d willing, in Israel.

We had a memorable trip to Chicago but it was time to fly to Las Vegas.  A good flight, then we “Ubered” to the RV storage center and stocked up on supplies.  It has been over 100 degrees F the last two days (in contrast to about 60-70 in Chicago), and our RV air conditioner is getting a good workout.

We will now be heading out to our first destination, Joshua Tree National Park in California.