Finding the Best Hotels in Chicago
Posted in General by baairobe on Feb 10, 2012The city of Chicago has something to offer everyone, and the resulting tourism leads to a wide selection of hotels (in) Chicago that can suit anyone’s tastes and budgets. Just because some of the most luxurious hotels in the city are downtown (and expensive) does not mean you need to pay a lot to really enjoy the city though. Here are some options for alternative hotels when looking for the best places to stay.
If you are on a real budget and simply want a decent hotel for the best price possible, then you may want to simply look for a hotel that is off one of the many ‘L’ trains in Chicago. The public transportation system is easy to learn after a day or so, and if you are willing to commute 20-30 minutes into the city, you can literally cut your hotel bill in half. Consider neighborhoods like Lakeview, Rogers Park, or even locations like Wicker Park as areas that are an easy trip downtown, but out of the way enough that the hotels are not nearly as expensive.
If you think about it, this also gives you the opportunity to see more of the city than you would otherwise anyway. Wicker Park is well known for being a hip bar scene, selling interesting clothing and offering fresh, local food. Since the locals are the ones that eat here, the prices are good as well. Why not experience a little of what native Chicagoans live with on a daily basis? There should be a little time in any trip for things like this.
Of course, you probably want to spend some of your time downtown though, and if you would rather be in the heart of everything, then hotels on the Magnificent Mile or in the Loop are probably what you will want. This is the center of the city, and anything ‘tourist-y’ that you want to do is likely around here. Want to take a bus ride and see the highlights? Want to go on an architectural boat ride in the summer? Want to climb to the top of the Sears Tower, recently renamed the Willis Tower? This is where you are going to want to be.
If you can master the public transportation system, then you can really get anywhere in the city. Once you can do that, you could stay practically anywhere you wanted. There are such a wide range of hotels (in) Chicago, why not think about seeing the areas that few tourists ever do?