125 WEST OHIO
CHICAGO, IL 60610
DOWNTOWN
The Best Western River North is a first class hotel located 15 miles from O'Hare International Airport and just minutes to downtown Chicago. The hotel offers to guests clean and comfortable rooms at a price that will allow you to enjoy your trip to the Windy City. The hotel offers comfort, convenience and value. You'll be within walking to distance to all of Chicago's well known area attractions. The hotel has an on-site restaurant, indoor pool and fitness center. The River North area is renowned for the most concentrated cluster of independent art and home furnishing galleries in the country. Whether your visit is for business or pleasure, all of our spacious guestrooms at the hotel are equipped with upgraded amenities to help guests work smart and relax. Our friendly staff will provide maps and resources to make your trip more memorable and worth repeating. The hotel is the only one downtown to provide free parking to all it's guests. The Best Wester River North is convenient to many area dining, shopping and entertainment venues. ***Hotel has free parking***
Downtown Chicago puts on what is perhaps the finest display of modern architecture in the world, from the prototype skyscrapers of the 1890s to Mies van der Rohe's modernist masterpieces, and the second tallest building in the world, the quarter-mile-high Sears Tower. The compact heart of Chicago is known as the Loop, because it's circled by the elevated tracks of the CTA "El" trains. For a first impression of downtown, start your explorations by seeing the energy, drive and unmasked greed exposed in the trading pits of the various commodity marketplaces. Half the world's wheat and corn (and pork belly futures) are bought and sold amid the cacophonic roar of the Chicago Board of Trade, housed in a gorgeous Art Deco tower. From the entrance at 141 W Jackson St, where it intersects with LaSalle Street, take the elevator to the fifth-floor visitor gallery (Mon-Fri 8am-1.15pm; free), where displays trace the evolution of the various frantic shouts and signals by which trade is actually carried out. A similarly energetic ballet goes on from the early hours on Chicago's stock options exchange, the largest in the US. At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, three blocks away at 30 S Wacker Drive (Mon-Fri 7.30am-3.15pm; free), precious metals, currencies and commodities are bought and sold to the tune of some $50 billion a day. The best time to visit the exchanges is just before the close of trade, when the pressure is at its peak and tempers are most frayed.
