Renaissance Chicago North Shore Hotel
05/23/2004: A Marriott hotel, the Renaissance Chicago North Shore Hotel is a nice place. I booked this four star hotel on Hotwire.com. I wasn't really familiar with the area, but I figured that most areas of Chicago should be bustling with excitement. This couldn't be farther from the truth. (Although I don't hold the hotel responsible for the lack of local stuff.)
After arriving at the hotel, we checked into our room (early), and things started out just fine. The room was great, and there were lots of little things like nice shampoo, soaps, and the like.
The first thing I always do in a hotel room is flip on the TV. Much to my surprise, there were more than 40 channels available! Typically, most hotels only have 15 channels, most of which are sports or news. This was a wonderful surprise.
As I said, the room itself was great. As a matter of fact, the hotel was fine too, with the exception of the lack of knowledge from the staff. We asked about local places to go, and they gave us poor directions, and they didn't seem to know of anything. While they were friendly, they weren't terribly helpful.
We decided to just hop in the car and go get some grub. This proved much harder than I could have imagined. We tried to follow the directions of the front desk clerk, but that seemed to lead us nowhere. When we finally arrived in an area with a few small shops, we ended up hearing some loud popping noises while at a light. We figured that some kids were lighting fire crackers. Too bad that wasn't the case.
We continued on down the road, and decided that nothing was up in this direction. We turned around and started heading back in the direction of the hotel. We ended up stopping at the same light we were at when we heard the fire crackers. This time though, there were several cop cars, a few ambulances, a group of people, and a body. (Did I almost forget to mention the body?) Yeah, I guess we were like 10 feet from a murder only fifteen minutes ago. Nice.
At this point, we weren't as picky on what to eat. We raced back toward the hotel, but our dilemma was still there. There were almost NO restaurants within miles of this place. There was one small joint right across the street from the hotel though, and we figured that this was the best choice.
Upon getting our food to go, we went straight back to our comfortable room, and flipped on the TV. I decided that after our little murder mystery, it was best to stay in our room. That's where the 40+ channels came in handy.
Overall, we spent a lot of time in our room, and it was quite nice. Other than the lack of food (other than expensive hotel restaurants) in the area, I really have no major complaints.
In a Nutshell:
+ Nice room
+ Friendly Staff
+ 40+ TV channels
- FAR from restaurants
- Staff unknowledgeable about local area
- No local attraction information in hotel
Score: B
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