Hi,
I will be attending a week worth of training in St. Charles, Illinois where I will be staying at the hotel. I am wondering if it's worth while renting a car at ORD to go into the town on the evenings for dinner, etc or if I should just stick around St. Charles. The training takes place 9-5pm.

Thanks

IMO, you should try to do some things in downtown Chicago if you don't get much opportunity to visit here; better to take public transportation I think:

http://www.st-charles.il.us/publictrans.htm

Metra takes about 80 minutes.

St. Charles and its twin neighbor, Geneva, are wonderful river towns well worth checking out, with no shortage of good dining options. However, depending on the location of your hotel, you may not be able to see/do much even locally without a car or frequent cab rides.

Even getting to the Metra station in Geneva is going to require a round-trip cab fare, unless your hotel offers a shuttle. Not to mention that cab/shuttle fare from ORD to St. Charles is going to be hefty. So you may be better off just renting a car...but even so it still might be better to take the train into Chicago...it's cheap and they run frequently. (Don't bother with PACE, the suburban bus system...it's confusing and infrequent...not really designed for visitors)

It's really too far to be thinking about doing this every night, but once would be a good idea.

If you're staying at the former Accenture training facility, now called the Q center, pop me a PM and we'll have coffee. I'm about 3 miles from there.

Indeed training for ACN. Oct 10-15th. Will drop you a PM with the details.

Thanks!

If you can I'd just rent a car.

Metra if at all possible. From the far east side of St. Charles (Kirk Road and beyond), Metra's West Chicago stop may be easier to get to than Geneva's Metra stop.

Having spent time at the Q Center - it's pretty hard to get out to Chicago on a weekday. I would recommend either going before or afterwards - if you do go into CHI via metra, get the number of a local cab company - there aren't always cabs waiting in Geneva.

Plus, the Q Center food is pretty good & a wide variety, the pub on site, and Cadillac Ranch on Thursday night.

Agreed, especially during rush hour - it's a 2 hour drive!

But I would rent a car and not rely on cabs in St Charles.

They usually organize something into the City. The rest of your time will be accounted for.