If a trip to Champaign-Urbana is in your future, then these pointers are just for you...
1. If you have to fly to get here, use Willard Airport located just south of Champaign in Savoy. This one isn’t always feasible, of course. Sometimes you can find very affordable airfare in and out of this airport, and other times you can’t. But if you do happen to find good airfare, you can avoid a 2-hour car ride to the Indianapolis or Chicago Airport, and that will make your trip so much easier.
2. Make sure your visit doesn’t coincide with a big event weekend at the University of Illinois (unless, of course, you’ve intentionally planned it that way). If it does, you might have difficulty getting reservations at a hotel or at a restaurant, and driving from point A to point B in town will take you twice as long as it normally would. (Here’s a link to the University’s calendars: http://illinois.edu/find/calendars.html)
3. Hotels around here are plentiful and reasonably-priced. If you don’t want to spend more than $100 per night on a room, you’ll have plenty of options (again, this is assuming that you’re not visiting during a big school event!). And we even have a few bed & breakfasts in historic buildings, if that’s of interest to you. My favorite: The Avenue Bed & Breakfast.
4. Ordinarily, you won’t need to make dinner reservations…but do it just in case. I made this mistake last time my in-laws were visiting. I was so confident that no reservations were needed (after all, this is Champaign-Urbana we’re talking about). But wouldn't you know...we arrived at the restaurant to discover that everyone in town had reservations there that night because of “the big game”. Geez. So, we left the really nice restaurant and were immediately seated at the SPORTS bar across the street with big TVs. Who would’ve thought?
5. If you’d like to take a day trip to Chicago, hop on the train! There’s an Amtrak station in downtown Champaign and your journey will end right at Union Station in the center of Chicago. The fares will vary depending on the time and day of travel…one-way tickets range from as little as around $15 per adult to around $40 per adult. But this way you don’t have to deal with Chicago traffic or worry about finding (and paying for) parking in the city. Sometimes the trains do run a little late, but in my opinion, being stuck in a train with a good book is way better than being stuck in traffic on the highway.
6. Great news: there’s more to do in Champaign-Urbana than you might think! Champaign-Urbana has great parks and gardens, wineries, museums, an orchard, a farmer’s market, art galleries, antique shops, musical performances, excellent restaurants, etc. Of course, this is not a big city and so you can’t expect it to have quite as much variety as you might find in, say, Chicago. But for our size (and somewhat remote location) you should be able to find lots of interesting things to keep you occupied no matter your tastes.
Happy travels!
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