What 15707 DialAFlight clients thought of USA

Oli de Bernier and team have organised our holidays before and their planning has been superb! Great communication and service.

Everything very good

Service was fantastic from start to finish. My only criticism and disappointment was the size of the room for 4 adults and 1 child making some facilities unusable

Keep up the good work - we will be back

Everything was great. Being able to contact DialAFlight while on the trip to make adjustments was perfect.

Mike was truly fantastic. I fully recommend your services to all my family and friends.

Thanks for your help with our recent trips to the USA. You have always been really helpful - phoning us to update us on the protests on the M25 on the morning of our flight was really appreciated.

Very pleasant to talk to and answered all my questions right away

Excellent help again from Jordan

Always first class customer service. Wouldn’t go anywhere else.

I’ll be honest I had never heard of DAF before this holiday but stumbled on them on Google and never been happier. Constant contact from booking to departure and even though I didn’t need any help while on holiday I’m sure and confident that they would have provided help if needed.

Everything worked out perfectly. Thank you DialAFlight.

Thank you to Marshall. I always keep coming back to you because of his service.

I very much appreciate having a named person dealing with my bookings and will always come back to you in future.

Wheelchair assistance at Heathrow was terrible. One hour and twenty minutes to get from plane to security.

As usual, excellent 5 star service and support from Wayne and the Team at DialAFlight.

Brilliant service, prompt in dealing with questions and advice

I was greatly pleased with the travel arrangements

As usual a great personable service.

The Hilton Boston Downtown booked by Lucas was excellent. Highly recommend for location, service and food. Boston is a great city to visit for a long weekend.

The level of customer service was excellent throughout the rebooking of my NYC trip during the pandemic. My only additional feedback is to make yourselves aware that the breakfast provided at the hotel was very poor and after the first morning we ate elsewhere.

Made life easier for us, thank you

The airports and airlines are a complete disaster. I’m glad I had DialAFlight to rely on when things went awry.

Great customer service, thank you Bobby! The phone is answered quickly and follow up is first class. We were recommended DialAFlight by friends and will do the same.

Everything went to plan. Thank you for all the assistance you gave us

Thanks yet again to Tyler

Marshall could not have made our holiday any better. Everything he suggested and recommended was top notch. A true professional

Extremely great service (again) from DialAFlight. Connie provided excellent service. She found flights for me and my two daughters and made several checks that we had covered Esta forms etc

Found the perfect solutions to complicated plans, all worked like clockwork

Always at the end of the phone and always respond to emails

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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