Lufthansa 1st class to Sweden: The planning & changes – Part 1
Lufthansa 1st class to Sweden: Outbound from South Bend – Part 2
Lufthansa 1st class to Sweden: The Westin Chicago & UBER Black & SUV – Part 3
Lufthansa 1st class to Sweden: Outbound from Chicago & United Global 1st lounge Chicago O’Hare International Airport – Part 4
Lufthansa 1st class to Sweden: The brand new and amazing Boeing 747-8 & 1st class seating & experience – Part 5
Lufthansa 1st class to Sweden: The 1st class terminal in Frankfurt – Part 6
Lufthansa 1st class to Sweden: A Porsche ride & domestic business class – Part 7
Lufthansa 1st class to Sweden: Outbound from Gothenburg Sweden & business class to Munich Germany- Part 8
Lufthansa 1st class to Sweden: A Mercedes ride and the 1st class lounge in Munich – Part 9
Lufthansa 1st class to Sweden: The Airbus A330 & 1st class experience – Part 10
Lufthansa 1st class to Sweden: An overnight in Toronto Canada at the SPG Four Points by Sheraton – Part 11
Lufthansa 1st class to Sweden: The Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge- Part 12
Lufthansa 1st class to Sweden: United business class back to Chicago & South Bend Indiana – Part 13
Lufthansa 1st class to Sweden: Final thoughts & Delta comparison – Part 14

In case you missed the first two posts in this trip report Lisa & I ended up in Chicago needing to overnight due to a delayed United Express flight from South Bend to Chicago resulting in a missed connection and the need to overnight before picking up our trip the next day.

After arriving and a bit of a long walk our bags were waiting for us already on the carousel. I was just happy United had not lost my bags yet 🙂 . Next I clicked on an UBERx request, but none were available. UBER Black was and only a few minutes away That worked and the ride was nice and the rep was great and did take us the most direct route to the Westin (I followed along on my GPS as well). I really like it when they do not take you the “scenic” way; to me that seems too taxi-ish if you know what I mean. The drive was super nice and even offered us waters. What a nice touch and what I have come to expect from UBER.

I have stayed at this Westin before and was upgraded then to the smallest suite I have ever seen. My room this time was a King and was fine and thankfully no where near the elevators. The hotel was fully booked up due to two weddings so I was happy to get a room at all for just 3k SPG points.

It is nice to have SPG points from my SPG AMEX Card when I need them in a pinch like this. BTW if you are going to the Chicago Seminars it is a short drive from the host location.

For some reason my phone seems to have dumped all my photos from the room? Ah well, The Westin Chicago Northwest has such great photos on their site you can just pop over and see for yourself here.

I even had a chance to meet up with a twitter follower George for a drink & got to chat a bit about points and such and that is always a treat. One of the things I just love about running a blog is getting to know readers from all over and how they are, most times, in their own way sharing and adopting the points game in their lives! But I digress.

After a good dinner at the hotel we split a very nummy Chocolate cake. What a perfect way to end a day and the Westin bed was soft and perfect.

Breakfast was free and included as a Platinum SPG member and it looks like I will end up, at this point, only a few nights shy of retaining my SPG Platinum status for 2015 so there may have to be a few “mattress runs” in my future if absolutely necessary unless I change up some other reservations I have with other hotel points.

I was really looking forward to getting the day started and checking out the United 1st class lounge in Chicago. I had been told not to expect all that much but that it was better than a normal domestic lounge while not all that near to where the Lufthansa gate would be. Fair enough we planned to get to the airport early to check it out (more about that in part 4 btw). For now I wanted to test out UBER SUV just because I never had and we did have a bunch of luggage and an SUV just makes that simpler.

I fired up the UBER app and the app said the SUV was just a few minutes away. I got good updates from the driver and he said 10-15 (app showed than 5). I appreciated the updates. The driver was nice but no waters were offered and he really took the scenic highway route to the airport. This resulted in a final bill that was nearly TWICE the bill of the not inexpensive UBER Black car ride to the same place we came from the day before. Most disappointing. Oh also then there were a several tolls we had to pay as well due to the longer route chosen by this driver compared to no tolls from the UBER Black route.

I e-mailed in to UBER about what happened and my frustration that the driver did not take the same route to ORD as the great UBER BLACK driver had the night before. They responded with an adjustment to the bill to what the mileage should have been and gave me some credit back (still had to pay the tolls tacked on). Bottom line with UBER: do check the route being taken and e-mail in if you are “taken for a ride” shall we say.

Stay tuned tomorrow for some issues with Lufthansa’s online check-in, and the “buggy” United 1st class lounge review. – René

Editorial Note: This content is not provided by American Express.  Any opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by American Express.

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