I've just crossed another hotel off my list - the Hilton Garden Inn in South Holland, IL on the far south side of Chicago. I've stayed there a number of times and I always got a good rate (about $100 a night - which is great for a Hilton Garden Inn). I think I finally figured out why the rooms are so cheap the last time I was there.
I got into the hotel around 8:30 on Tuesday evening earlier this week. I was listening to the World Series in the car and was looking forward to taking a couple beers from the pantry they have down in the lobby up to my room to drink while I was watched the game.
I got checked in and went straight up to the room. I turned on the TV and tried to find the game. Nothing. They didn't have the local Chicago Fox channel on the television system at the hotel.
Strike one.
I was just incredulous when I couldn't find the game on TV. Hell, even some of the other channels they had - Cartoon Network and ESPN2, to name a couple - were actually channels that had info-mercials playing on them. HBO was coming in all fuzzy (I remembered that from before) and the local CBS affiliate was also almost non-watchable because of the video distortion.
I had some work to do, so I just decided to get that taken care of. I still wanted a couple of beers. Every Hilton Garden Inn that I've stayed at have pantry areas that sell individual bottles of beer. I went down to get a beer and I went to the refrigerator in the pantry. No beer. I turned to the night clerk and said, "Don't you guys sell beer?"
She said, "South Holland is a dry community, sir."
I said, "You're kidding! I didn't know there were dry communities any where around the Chicago area."
I guess I never wanted a beer when I stayed there before. I never knew.
Strike Two.
So, I decided to do some work and try and listen to the game on the radio. Couldn't get the game on radio - lots of static.
Not quite Strike Three, but that one was fouled off.
So I got on line and tried to return e-mails. Only their server didn't like my computer and they wouldn't let me send any e-mails on the two accounts that I have. And the speed for their high-speed service was slow. It was taking forever for our company's service site to come up. I just gave up.
Strike three.
The only problem is that I have a dealer who is located just down the road from the Hilton Garden Inn in South Holland, and it's a convenient place to stay. But, quite honestly, there are no good places to eat at around here - you have to drive at least 15 minutes to find any thing other than crappy family style restaurants.
The next time I have to stay on the south side of Chicago, I'll stay further down the road in Tinley Park. There's more hotel choices and many more choices for restaurants. And they're a little more work friendly than this hotel was.
Comments