A Good Stay
Hotel is President Abraham Lincoln Hotel and Conference Center
The hotel room we have is 633. We pulled up in front and were greeted by a friendly valet who got us a cart, answered questions about parking versus valet service, even volunteered that you can park on the street overnight for free until Monday morning. I took the chance that parking on the street within sight of the hotel would be safe.
But first, I checked in. I offered my debit card, but the concierge told me that the card would be charged $100 in excess of the room charge and that I would receive any unused funds within two weeks after leaving the hotel. I hadn’t heard of this before, but I don’t travel much. It could be odd, it could be routine … I wouldn’t know. Whatever the case, the concierge was at all times helpful and friendly.
I checked in with a credit card, then loaded up the cart and went to the room. Having read online reviews about the cleanliness of the room or lack thereof, I looked around. The carpet was clean and the condition of the room was good. I don’t know when this hotel went up, but it wasn’t any time during the past 20-40 years. Still, it’s well maintained. The bathroom was clean. The only problem we found was a burned out light bulb in a lamp next to the bed.
We had a light supper at Bennigan’s, across the street from the south side of the hotel. The restaurant was nothing special, but the waitress was nice and … after we left the restaurant and were walking away, the waitress came running after us with my ball cap in her hand. That’s going the extra mile!
On the 25th, we got up at 7:00 am. We found a café within a couple blocks walk and had a good breakfast there. We got to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum early, sat outside in the wonderful morning sun until the line dwindled, then went in to buy tickets. $10 for Sandy (Adult), $7 for me (Senior). We saw everything in the museum, didn’t visit the library. It took us about 2½ hours for the whole thing, including grazing in the gift shop. We could have stayed longer, but felt we had no reason to.
We went to Oak Ridge Cemetery to see Lincoln’s burial site, thence to his temporary site of about 6 months (before he was buried in his present location). We headed downtown to Cold Stone to get ice cream. We drove to Lincoln’s house and looked over the neighborhood, went through a couple houses.
After all this we went back to the hotel to rest before going out for dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant called Saputo’s Italian Foods. Well, we were turned away at the door (our choice) by the owner saying that the wait is 45 minutes.
By the way, although we were in room 633 at the President Abraham Lincoln Hotel and Conference Center, I was able to get on line via the Hilton hotel’s connection, since they were right across the street. 3 bars out of 5 much of the time.
One factoid you don’t hear from the hotel is that you can park on the street for free from Friday after 5 pm until 8 am Monday. We found 3 or 4 parking places at different times, each within 1 block of the hotel entrance. We didn’t know whether it would be safe, but it was. We experienced no damage, nor did we see any evidence of damage to other vehicles.
I saw a couple weeks later that my credit card had not been charged anything, as I had made reservations on line earlier and the charge was made then.