Into the Valley of the Sun - Phoenix / Arizona

The second station takes us from Chicago to the southwest of the USA. Phoenix / Arizona is our destination. However, we first have to get from the hotel to the airport, which was quite chaotic today. A section of the train was closed for construction work, so we had to take a completely unusable articulated bus as a shuttle from the 'Western' station to 'Addison'. But who chose such a bus for a route where 95% of the passengers have one or more huge suitcases? Because the bus only had seats. No space for luggage or strollers. If we hadn't been in Chicago, I could have mistaken it for the KVB in Cologne.

After over 1.5 hours on the bus (!) and through countless construction sites (which reminded me of Cologne), we continued by train. Thank goodness we decided to go to the airport earlier than usual and potentially wait there longer... The earlier departure paid off during the train/bus journey...

There was quite a mess at the airport in Chicago as well. A very peculiar way of guiding the crowd of people through the security check in a horizontal row of three, similar to children in kindergarten. You were allowed to step forward to enter the security area. And heaven forbid if you ran faster than the two people next to you in the row. Then there would be immediate yelling from behind, telling you to walk in a uniform pace. Behind the row of three, a drug-sniffing dog was being chased, and if you avoided it and "left" the row, the drill instructor could be clearly heard. An American barracks can't be worse...

But we made it, we were on time and took our seats on the plane. We were highly amused when the flight attendant asked the people sitting in the two rows next to the emergency exit if they were aware that they were sitting there and would have to act in case of an emergency. At first, everyone nodded or said nothing... but that wasn't enough. She wanted to hear a clear "YES" from each person. Similar to a wedding... and assuming that she would now explain exactly what to do in case of an emergency, as we always experience on German planes, she simply said, "Okay, please read the instruction sheet in your seat pocket," turned around, and went back to her other tasks.

So much for the American way of emergency preparedness. It wasn't just us who found it extremely funny.

But anyway, after three hours we landed in the heat, in Phoenix (at 35 degrees Celsius - constantly!!). The first look outside gave us a feeling of happiness: the view of the mountains and the blue sky reinforced the feeling of why we love to travel to the USA. The nature is simply stunning, and we know that. But Chicago couldn't offer us that, and we were impatient for the actual journey, the road trip through the USA, to finally start.

The first look brought everything back to life, and now we are immensely excited for the next days and weeks.

In the airport, we quickly picked up the booked car, a "kind of green" Kia Soul. Sufficient for our tour in the next 12 days until we relax for four weeks in Palm Springs. But that's all in the future. Now it's time for the landscape...