visiting -places to stay?

pesto
Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:28:30 +0000

I just want to reiterate that the Ramada is really quite acceptable. We just stayed there to drop off my son for Orientation (and for our first introduction to U. Chicago). The university rate was $109/night. For that we got a concrete rather than lake view, but we also got mitigated traffic noise. I had been led, from comments on CC and elsewhere, to expect rundown and seedy but was pleasantly surprised by the cleanliness and friendliness of the place. We DID walk to the campus and back, being seasoned walkers. I’d guess it was maybe 1 - 1.5 miles from the Ramada to the heart of campus. You can walk along the lake and then cut over on 57th street (or earlier) if you would like a more scenic route, or, if you’d like to get a taste of the city, you can cut over more directly via the Hyde Park route. The main problem with the Ramada is the lack of proximity to restaurants for dinner. There is a restaurant right next door which is fine for breakfast, but just mediocre for dinner, and, if you have any vegetarians in the group, there are very slim pickings. We ended up having dinner delivered one night (the hotel desk has lots of menus for places that deliver) and that worked. Of course, if one has more energy, one can eat dinner near campus, or one can head up to downtown, but we found after a day of hiking around Hyde Park and UChicago that we just wanted to hunker down at the hotel.

We had rented a car because of having to transport dorm equipage, and we found the drive from Midway up Cicero across on Route 55 and down Lake Shore Drive to be a breeze around noon on a Thursday. Coming from the Boston area, I was impressed by the relative LACK of traffic, but then we were driving only in the off hours and then on Saturday morning for the move-in. We hit the Target near Roosevelt to pick up dorm stuff we didn’t want to bring on the plane, and it was also thoroughly acceptable – almost Ikea-like in its strategies for facilitating the shopping experience. Employees went out of their way to greet us.

We couldn’t be happier with our first visit to the place where we had already dropped a significant amount of dough.