Munich activities : Marien Plaza

Since we could not extend our stay in Munich, we headed out to the town bright and early in the morning instead. We took some pictures in the Marien Plaza, which was only two stops from the Hackerbrucke station. When we visited two years ago, it was full of tourists, but not at 7am in the morning this time. We found a café that’s open for breakfast, and had some pastry and coffee and then we went to the main train station, took a quick walk back to the hotel to pick up the luggage and headed to the airport.


Marien Plaza


Breakfast


Munich Train Station

At check in, we found out that United had arranged a different flight UA 9805 for our canceled 907 flight from Chicago to San Francisco. It’s also the same 3-class configuration aircraft, with the new lie flat seats. And the departure time was like 10 minutes after our new 2-class configuration flight. We asked to be booked on that flight, as they would have been the case if we had not called United to change to the 2-class flight. But the system would not allow the agent to do this, but at least the supervisor got us on to the FFCC standby list, and also checked our luggage onto this flight.

Lounge : Munich Airport Lufthansa Business Lounge

We then stopped by the Business lounge for some snacks before heading to the gate.


Munich airport Lufthansa lounge


Business Lounge

Flight: UA 907 Munich (MUC) 12:35pm Chicago (ORD) 3:01pm
Aircraft: 777
Distance: 4342 miles
Scheduled Flight Time : 9 hr 26 min
Class: Business

We were in seat 9H and 9J, the front business class cabin. And while the leg room is a little less, we did enjoy the quietness of the front cabin more. This is the only flight we would have needed the empower adapter to use our notebooks, and we decided it’s not worth to take the adapter for just this one flight, and only used the notebook for couple hours till the battery was used up. The service was typical of United, and we did appreciate the warm nuts very much


United old Business Class seat


Warm nuts and drinks

For lunch, we had the Mango salad with shrimp for appetizer, and the Herb roasted orange chicken with Basmati rice for the main entrée. This was followed by a chocolate mousse cake for dessert, and before we knew, it’s time to choose either the cheese plate or the turkey sandwich for breakfast.


Appetizer


Lunch


Dessert, Coffee and Baileys


Fruit and Cheese


Lounge : Chicago O’hare Airport C17 Red Carpet and Arrivals

After we landed and cleared custom and immigration, we went to the C concourse for our connecting flight. We were still confirmed on flight 153 (2-class aircraft that leaves at 6:47pm) First class and waitlisted on flight 9805 Business class that leaves at 7:00pm. The 9805 flight was booked full in business class, so our chances did not look good. We asked at the RCC to let us use the Arrivals shower suites, as our XC ticket should allow us access. The agent asked us for the invitation, and we told her the Munich check-in agents could not print those, so we don’t have any. Then the RCC agent printed out the invitations for us instead. It’s great to be able to take a shower after the long flight.


Chicago airport RCC


Arrivals Suite in Chicago RCC


Flight : UA 9805 Chicago (ORD) 7:00pm San Francisco (SFO) 9:30pm
Aircraft: 767 new configuration
Distance: 1846 miles
Scheduled Flight Time : 3 hr 59 min
Class: Business

We were still hanging out near the flight 9805 gate even though the flight 153 was going to start boarding, and then the agent told us we would be able to get on the flight ! This is great ! The new lie flat seats are definitely way better than the domestic first class seat on a 757 aircraft, which the flight 153 was using. We did realize there’s no hot meal for domestic business class anymore, but that’s a small sacrifice. And after all, the cold turkey ham sandwich was not that bad either


New Business Class configuration


Nuts and Drinks


Turkey sandwich dinner

We landed pretty much on time to San Francisco, and our luggage came out very quickly thanks to the priority luggage tags, I guess The vacation was now officially over But we had so much fun in this trip, that it’s not too early to start planning another US to Asia via the Atlantic award trip again for next year !

Thanks for reading my first FT Trip Report, hope you like it.