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Days Inn Lincoln Park Has a Secret, Star-Studded Rock 'n' Roll Past
Tucked away in a strip with an independent movie theater and chain stores like Jamba Juice is an unassuming hotel with a bad-boy rock 'n' rolla past. The Days Inn Lincoln Park is nicknamed the Rock & Roll Days Inn for its musician clientele, which includes Sean Lennon, Twisted Sister, Nelly Furtado, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Dave Matthews, KRS One and the Foo Fighters.
It's rumored to be the place where Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain conceived their child, says Stefanie Hrejsa, general manager of the hotel. Years later, Love allegedly walked out of the hotel and said she couldn't stay there because of the painful memories, Hrejsa says.
Tags: Thompson Hotels / Hotel Industry News / Stephen Brandman / Chicago Hotels / Hotel News / → All Tags
On December 1st, The Hotel Sax Chicago Will Be Thompsonized
Room 1433 at Hotel Sax Chicago.
We received a couple of tips lately that there was something brewing with Thompson Hotels and usually when more than one tip comes in, we know something's up. But today we have confirmation that indeed The Hotel Sax in Chicago, best known for its RockBand studio and where we recently shacked up the other week, is turning into a Thompson Hotel.
The conversion will officially happen on December 1st and while the hotel was recently renovated a few years ago, we fully expect the place to get "Thompsonized."
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theWit's Library Gets People Talking, More Than Reading
The lobby of theWit buzzes with businessmen chatting, workers scurrying about and people wandering in and out, but head to the second floor of the hotel and you'll find some peace in the library.
But it's not a library per se. Yes, the table in the middle of the room has small stacks of oversized coffee-table books on everything from fashion to architecture to music that you can peruse. (The most popular one among library visitors is Frank Lloyd Wright Complete Works, Vol. 3: 1943-1959.) But it's more about the atmosphere.
Tags: Hotel Renovations / W Hotels / Chicago Hotels / → All Tags
Inside the New Room at The W Chicago-City Center
Since the W considers itself the purveyor of cool, it makes sense that the chain would decide to redo the W Chicago-City Center. It was the first W hotel to come to the city in 2001 and it was looking a little shabby.
The $35 million makeover targeted the W Living Room, a.k.a. the lobby, and the hotel's 235 guestrooms and suites. What was hot back in '01, aside from 'N Sync, was dark decor with oversized furniture. The hotel tried to get away from that dated look throughout the hotel with bright, airy spaces.
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Chicago's New Hotel Restaurants Become Culinary Hot Spots
If you want to check out Chicago's hottest restaurants, you'll have to to go a hotel. Whether it's the cool atmosphere or the delish food, hotel restaurants have become the big trend around town. We'll give you three of the best new hotel restaurants in Chicago:
Pelago in Raffaello Hotel
This Italian restaurant adds seafood to the mix with dishes like from-scratch ravioli filled with Dover sole and caviar. It also offers an affordable yet yummy lunch menu of dishes like tagliolini with organic spinach, crab meat and roasted garlic. But whichever meal you choose, you know it'll be good since Chef Mauro Mafrici snagged a Michelin star at his former Tribeca restaurant Lo Scalco. But the atmosphere is just as much of a draw, with porcelain chandeliers dangling above white chairs and tablecloths and aquamarine damask banquettes.
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Elysian Chicago Gives a Sneak Peek of Its Rooms and TV Mirrors
The Elysian Chicago's grand-opening date got pushed back to mid-November, but the hotel's giving us a taste of what to expect in its 188 guest rooms and suites, which include high-tech amenities like television mirrors.
Averaging at 890 square feet, rooms are decked out in grays and other muted shades. And they all have marble bathrooms with soaking tubs, furnished balconies fireplaces and kitchens. But the perks we like most are the free wireless and the dual vanities with inset SÉURA LCD televisions in the bathrooms. When you turn it on, the LCD picture floats on one of the two mirrors. When you turn it off, the LCD vanishes, leaving behind a normal-looking mirror. What fun it'll be getting ready at the vanity for a night on the town; the downside is that it'll add another hour to our prep time for sure.
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We Ate 'Whipped Chlorophyll' At The Peninsula Chicago's Avenues
Only days before Chicago's Peninsula Hotel was voted second in CN Traveler's Top Hotels in the United States, we finally sat down for a meal at the hotel's celebrated and highly awarded Avenues Restaurant. Already intimately familiar with the hotel, including their afternoon tea service, we expected that this last missing piece to completely blow us away.
And the thing is, our meal at Avenues did so much more than delight our tastebuds; it caused an epiphany in response to the service from the maitre d' and wait staff. Read on for the whole story and the drool-worthy concoctions including "whipped chlorophyll."
Having lived in Chicago for a period and experienced most every hotel—not an exaggeration—through their afternoon teas, restaurants, bars, or actual rooms, we nonetheless have remained always a few steps away from dining at Avenues. For one, the pricetag stopped us (an 8-course meal, with each course consisting of about three bites, costs $118), and we also could never rustle up friends to accompany us and appreciate it.
But with the electricity out in a friend's apartment on his birthday, we decided that it was time for Avenues.
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Chicago's Raffaello Hotel is Mag Mile Style Without A High Pricetag
Just when we thought that you couldn't get anything better on Chicago's Michigan Avenue than The Peninsula, we stayed at the Raffaello Hotel a mere two blocks away. Whoa—hold up a second—like the Raffaello could ever trump any Peninsula, let alone one that placed in the top hotels as voted by CN Traveler. No way—what we mean is that the Raffaello is smaller, less fussy, more vintage, quieter, and closer by mere steps to some of Michigan Avenue's top attractions.
We were surprised by the Raffaello's innate charm. Like we said during our video tour of the room, the Raffaello is the Chicago 4-star underdog hotel; it's extremely easy to overlook it when it's neighbors with such illustrious and large properties as The Drake, The Westin, The Park Hyatt and The Four Seasons. And those are just within two blocks. But with a king bed room rate that we scored of $139, it's easy to see why one should pay some attention to the boutique Raffaello.
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Four Seasons Chicago Unveils New Suites
For those who roll like VIPs when traveling, the Four Seasons Chicago wants to give you an incentive to stay at its newly designed suites with its Suite Rewards package.
For every night you stay at either the one- or two-bedroom suites, the hotel will give you a $100 gift card to The 900 Shops on the Magnificent Mile, which has an indoor entrance via the hotel so you have easy access for those nighttime Gucci cravings; free parking, which regularly costs $46 for valet and $34 for self-parking; and breakfast for two.
And it's not a chintzy continental breakfast, either. The Midwest Breakfast comes with fresh juice; two eggs with bacon, ham or sausage; hash browns; pastries; and coffee, hot chocolate or tea.
Tags: Hotel Video Tours / Chicago Hotels / Retro Hotels / → All Tags
In The Shadow Of The John Hancock Building At The Raffaello Chicago
Sometimes you stay in hotels because you're on a vacation, and other times you stay in hotels because of a business trip or special occasion, but you never plan for emergencies when you need to stay in a hotel, such as in the case of electrical problems at home. During our recent visit to Chicago, this is exactly what happened to friends of ours, and so we ended up next door in the Raffaello Hotel, a small but four-star property a block off of Michigan Avenue and cuddled right up to the rear of the John Hancock Center.
The hotel, for all its vintage charm and excellent location, is about as under-the-radar as you can get; there were no tour groups checking in, or really any tourists or groups for that matter. The clientele skews older and more sophisticated, like these are the people who have been coming here for years and years, desire a comfortable room and proximity to the lake, prime shopping and downtown, and yet aren't willing to pay Four Seasons prices for it—our king room was $139. You won't find a bar scene—although they do have a small bar off the lobby—and you will not miss the traffic noise of Michigan Ave, since the Raffaello is tucked just far enough back to miss out on that hubbub.
Tags: Hotel Video Tours / Chicago Hotels / Sweet Suites / → All Tags
Inside a Paramount Suite At theWit Hotel Chicago
Please allow us to remind you that Chicago is not New York, and nowhere is this more apparent than at theWit Hotel in Chicago, where the Paramount Suite (pictured above and in the gallery below) begins at only $450 a night. What will $450 get you in NYC, you ask? Well, not even one night in the most standard room at the new Crosby Street Hotel, for example, or maybe only a few hours of sitting in the lobby of The Pierre. In the Windy City however, you'll get a full-size kitchen with Wolfgang Puck coffeemaker, two bathrooms, and a wall of windows with all imaginable views of downtown.
Tags: Hotel Wine Tastings / Wine-Tasting Hotels / Marriott Hotels / Chicago Hotels / → All Tags
Crush Some Grapes at the Chicago Marriott Mag Mile's Wine Tasting
If you've always wanted to try making wine after seeing that I Love Lucy episode where Lucy stomps grape with her feet and laughter ensues, go to the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile's annual Wine Tasting and Grape Crushing event on Oct. 20 from 4:30 to 7 p.m. Okay, so you won't actually be stomping on grapes with your feet and it won't be as hilarious. Instead, you'll use a destemmer crusher machine to help turn those grapes into vino. At least it'll save your tootsies from turning purple and your clothes from getting stained.
As part of the second annual festivities, Executive Chef Myk Banas of the hotel's restaurant, Harvest, will host a wine tasting inside the Grand Lobby. You'll get to swish the 2008 Farmstead Red American Sangiovese wine from last year's harvest crush. There also will be hors d'oeuvres paired with the vintage, such as various house-made sausages, like chicken sausage, and artisan cheeses from the Midwest. After the tasting, you'll have your chance to crush hundreds of grapes for next year's 2010 vintage.
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