Chicago airport (Gary Chicago International Airport)

Name: juicy_lucy

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Product:	Gary Chicago International Airport
Date:	23/10/08 (166 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gets you from A to B.

Disadvantages: It's an airport

Chicago airport.

On a recent visit to san Diego, we had to have a stop in Chicago airport for a couple of hours...most of my travelling seems to be spent in airports!
It was the busiest airport in the United States until Atlanta became the busiest and it was apparently voted best airport in North America in 2000...that's 8 years ago so i don't know which airport has been winning since then.
The airport is 20 miles from downtown Chicago but since we weren't actaully going to Chicago we didn't actally leave the airport so I can't comment on the transport links.
**The Terminals**
Of course when stuck in an airport these are the places you see most often.
There are 4 terminals and strangely enough these are Terminals 1, 2, 3 and Terminal 5 which is the International Terminal...whatever happened to number 4?
All of the terminals are as expected, well served with restaurants , bars and business services... important when you have a 3 hour wait, and each terminal serves different airlines , with the International Terminal (where we landed) seeming to take the most planes. It was at this point, with a long wait, that I wished i had my laptop to while away the hours, because I did spot several plug ins for laptops in a place aclled plug in Lane.
I did however change money in the International terminal and seemed to get a better rate than that which was being offered in the UK.
All of the teminals have a duty free area but because I was flying on to San diego from here, i didn't buy anything. The one in International terminal was the normal kind of duty free place- i always think they are interchangeable between airports!

**My Experience**

Security in the airport seems to be paramount and when I landed there was a queue to get through customs. We had been given entry visas and had to form an orderly queue to get into the actual airport. Passports were checked, fingerprints and photos taken and a few questions asked such as the length of the visit and where i was staying etc...nothing too arduous although some people seemed to be at passport control for ages.

The international terminal is very busy and because I was flying internally i had to take the shuttle to terminal 3 (i think-it was a blur!). The thing that struck me about this particular airport were the queues. Once I had collected my luggage from the luggage reclaim, which is huge, and has far more reclaim belts than any other airport i have been in, I had to check my luggage in for the next leg of the journey. For security reasons (or so I thought) it couldn't go from Newcastle to san Diego but had to be reclaimed and then re checked in.

My ideas about security being tight were soon dashed. Once I had handed in my tickets and been reallocated seats (I realised I had to reclaim luggage because the seat tickets had been issued in the UK), the luggage was then left in a pile near the check in desks which was a tad bizarre when I considered the safety issues. It didn't go straight to the plane area on the conveyor but rather i had to leave it with a member of staff who appeared to be "guarding" the piles of luggage left in the one area.

This whole queuing experience took me more than one hour, and and it was then time for the connecting flight. Time for the long walk to the gate, and it is a long walk. However, the walk along the usual type of corridors found in airports is interspersed with shops and mostly eating and drinking places. Next to my gate there was even what looked like a small eating complex with different types of bars and restaurants through an archway and all clustered together.

**Verdict**


A very big and quite bewildering airport where everybody but me seemed to know where they were going. There are lots and lots of eateries, the whole place is light and airy and clean, but at the end of the day it's an airport and thankfully it got me from A to b with minimum fuss and no delays.

Thanks for reading.

Daniela x

Summary: chicago airport