Originally Posted by
mstraveler
Thanks very much. Last year I took the train in to the loop from somewhere nearish to Buffalo Grove (which is where the meeting actually is), which was not a great experience, so I was hoping that staying outside the city might be easier all around.
But Chicago, of course, is busy and spread out like San Francisco, and solving one problem creates others, like renting a car at ORD (probably not fun) and driving around in the traffic (definitely not fun). And always much harder being so unfamiliar with the area. Doing this all around SF would be easy.
Last year we stayed at the Palmer House and it might make more sense for me to just take some cab/uber option to there and either stay in the loop area or take the train up north. The Botanical Garden was beautiful the only time I was there. It is just such a short amount of time - basically Saturday and a couple of evenings for not night-life people. Trying not to make this too big a project!
There's no question you'll hit some traffic going into the city. But from Deerfield it's a straight shot down 94, hard to get it wrong. It just requires a little patience at rush hour.
But it should be much better for your friend to take the L. See if you can drop off the car in the city and save some money too. My thought is there's a lot more to do there, plus you literally have thousands of options for dinner and a few glasses of wine if that's your thing.
If you stay in the suburbs, you'll need the car of course. But it will be easy to drive anywhere. In fact, I wouldn't worry about staying at one of the nicer hotels like the Westin, which is actually near Wheeling's "restaurant row" on Milwaukee Ave., and being able to easily drive anywhere you want to go. For your friend, a cab from ORD to that area is probably around $30-35, so not too bad. A lot more if you stay closer to the lake.