What 15640 DialAFlight clients thought of USA

Declan has been brilliant

Excellent customer relationships. Scott has been the most helpful, knowledgeable and responsive consultant throughout the entire process. I would most definitely recommend!

Kennedy has been fantastic - great communication throughout

Very good guidance on hotels. Excellent support before and during trip.

Excellent service even when I was in the USA

I would like to share this experience. When I first booked I said to Joey you are £40 dearer than I can book online. His response was in an emergency who are you going to call? True I said and booked. Six days into my trip I had a call from home, my grandson was in intensive care following a bleed in his brain. I was on the road back to Philadelphia when I called the emergency number. It was answered in seconds and within 10 minutes my flight had been changed. Brilliant reaction. Conclusion might have been a few quid more but probably the best £40 I have spent in years. Thank you all

Great service as always - thank you Conrad and the team

Jake has once again delivered an amazing holiday. Even when we wanted to change our itinerary midway through he organised everything over the phone for us. Wouldn’t book with anyone else!

Professional service throughout - would definitely book with DialAFlight again

24hrs service, quick action taken. I would highly recommend them because they were there when I needed them, during my difficult time with a flight.

I have used DialAFlight a few times before - this trip also went well. Noah was very helpful.

You are always exceptionally helpful.

Sean was very helpful and managed our trip throughout the pandemic resulting in us traveling two years later. We will be back soon for another booking

Roy was great as always and did a great job. I always recommend him

Excellent service as usual. Had a fantastic 25 nights in USA on road trip. Want to thank Jessica and the team for all the help and advice given. My advice is give them a call. You won’t regret it!

We very pleased with the level of service we received from Nicky Degun. We had a stress free holiday yet again

I Just would like to thank you all for excellent service and I'll definitely recommend DialAFlight to friends and family. 10 out of 10

Having tried to self-book flights for the USA but failed to find flights within our budget I tried DialAFlight. Jake was informative, achieved the best value and in addition, following a change to our circumstances, he helpfully arranged additional car hire to accommodate a privately booked excursion.

Dexter Tahsin was extremely helpful over the 3 years it took to actually be able to fly to the USA. Excellent service and will definitely use you again.

Excellent service. Hotels were excellent at each destination. Very helpful at each stage of planning our trip.

Sean was incredibly helpful and efficient. He made the process stress free.

Flight cancellations for the return home from USA could potentially have been disastrous. However, DialAFlight ensured that new flights were arranged and in the end it was plain sailing - or was that ‘plane sailing’?

You provided us with very good service. We will definitely recommend you. Thank you for looking after us

I would like to express my appreciation to Joe Orton for arranging our holiday to Vegas which was a success. The return flight was delayed for 5 hours but that was BA’s fault. I will definitely book my future holidays with DialAFlight

Excellent and attentive service. Only one 'could do better'. We were on Virgin's summer overflow flight on the way back in a 737 - not comfortable for an overnight transatlantic - a bigger plane took off 30 minutes before which we'd have preferred to be on.

Excellent customer care and service from polite, friendly and knowledgeable agent.

Can't fault level of service and attention to detail. Thank you Gavin.

Always so helpful and efficient

Zoe was amazing from the first time I spoke to her about what kind of holiday I wanted

We were generally satisfied with the service.

Singing the blues in Chicago!

The upbeat Windy City is just unbeatable for music, art and glitz, says Mark Porter

We were in the Pump Room bar of a hotel on Chicago's Gold Coast, one-time favourite of the Rat Pack.

My friend Melissa, who has lived in the Windy City for decades, approached the full and large coupe of vodka martini with lips puckered. Her cocktail looked capable of stunning a bull elephant. 'Clint Eastwood was here last time I dropped by,' she said, casually.

We tripped into the night air and headed down to the junction of Rush St and North State. This is the apex of Viagra Triangle, where silver-haired 'manthers' with big wallets and young partners drink Napa Valley's grandest crus.

Hugo's Frog Bar: famous for its crab cakes, steaks and frogs' legs

FIRST PORT OF CALL
'Let's check out Hugo's Frog Bar,' said Melissa. 'It's more French than anything in Paris.' She was right. I live in France.

'Hey look, it's JB Pritzker,' she said loudly, pointing at a portly 50-something sitting nearby. 'He's standing for Illinois state governor next year for the Democrats. He's also the owner of Hyatt hotels.' In a stage whisper, she added: 'He's worth $3.5 billion.' Two glasses of good sauvignon blanc came to $50, but Melissa coughed up before I had even fumbled for my wallet.

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

Chicago is the place to come if you are a food lover who likes sport, art, music and architecture. And bars. It's cooler than New York, easier to get around and, despite a reputation for violence, is one of the friendliest places on the planet.

After the Frog Bar and a stupendous dinner at upmarket steakhouse Maple & Ash, we went to Buddy Guy's Legends.

This is a sprawling cavern of a Chicago Blues bar where you could easily bump into Eric Clapton, Robert Cray or any number of big blues names. Buddy himself was playing to a full house. I nursed a pint or two of Guinness slumped on a barstool.

Above me were the Stratocast-offs of Keith Richards, John Lee Hooker and BB King.

Owing to jetlag I don't remember much after that, until waking up in the New York Life Insurance Building in the financial quarter. This elegant art deco early skyscraper was recently converted into the Kimpton Gray Hotel.

Make sure you visit Buddy Guy's Legends for some live Blues

ARCHITECTURE
Built by William LeBaron Jenney, the father of the skyscraper, it's one of the finest buildings in a city whose architecture is more restrained and refined than that East Coast dazzler, the Big Apple (though Trump Tower strikes a jarring note on Chicago's otherwise elegant riverside).

Around the corner from the Gray is a very well-known location from many films, including the recent Batman films – the Chicago Board of Trade building, with its statue of the Roman goddess Ceres on the roof.

We later took a skyline helicopter trip, flitting among the rooftops, which put the scale and grandeur of the place into perspective.

Chicago rears up from the shores of Lake Michigan – from a swamp where Algonquin Indians grew onions and garlic.

Still a little jetlagged the following morning, I cycled the river path and then a short stretch of Lake Michigan before visiting the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the second-largest opera venue in the world (New York's Met is bigger).

It's a staggeringly grandiose palace of art deco and art nouveau, which opened a week after the Wall Street Crash. Maria Callas made her U.S. debut here. That afternoon, the echoey palace of sound was full of ghosts.

Down on the pedestrianised Chicago Riverwalk is the City Winery, beside the bridge made famous in the great car chase in the 1980 hit movie, The Blues Brothers.

Downtown Chicago has been the backdrop for many films, including Batman

A LOVELY END TO THE TRIP
The Winery buys grapes and makes its own wine, so Melissa and I shared a carafe before wandering across the river to the House of Blues, the music venue co-founded by The Blues Brothers star Dan Aykroyd.

It was pretty empty because it was mid-afternoon, but was still full of atmosphere.

After a delightful cruise on the vast lake and a spin around the Museum of Contemporary Art, it felt like my whirlwind trip to Windy City had blown itself out all too soon.

First published in the Daily Mail - February 2018

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