I was pleased to find out that the Affinia is located next door to Gino's East Pizzaria. I've been coming to Chicago for years and had never tried Gino's, so this was the perfect opportunity.

The hotel is located just a block off Michigan Ave. The lobby is modern with a great painting of the Chicago skyline behind the front desk. We arrived in Chicago late morning and were fortunate to get into our room early. I always check TripAdvisor before booking a room and enjoy photos of the rooms and hotel. I was pleasantlly surprised when we entered our room (#704) to find it much larger than what appeared on TripAdvisor. The hotel told me the tower rooms aren't as big (the tower is also where the slow elevator is located per earlier TripAdvisor reviews). I booked a two-bedroom suite. The beds were very comfortable, complete with a throw and a bolster pillow. The bathroom was gorgeous, with a large walk-in shower and Aveda amenities.

A tip before booking a room at the Affinia. Register for your free concierge and prior to your arrival, you can choose which type of pillow you'd like, along with your choice of experience kit (we chose the yoga kit -- free to use during your stay).

The hotel has a beautiful rooftop bar, which gets very crowded on the weekends. We ate breakfast in the restaurant one morning and ordered room service the next. Both meals were very good and the room service presentation was quite nice.

The evening concierge was very friendly and helpful as were the bell staff and cleaning staff, but I didn't feel the front desk staff were as friendly or helpful. Any requests, however, were met in a timely manner. Also, I requested a late check-out since our flight left early afternoon and they allowed up to 1 p.m. at no charge which I thought was generous.

Back to Gino's - we ate lunch there on Friday and didn't have to wait more than 15 min. for a table, but the rest of the weekend, lines were down the block to get in. If you go, try the barbeque chicken thin crust - it's delicious.

I would recommend the Affinia. I like to stay in a different hotel each time I visit Chicago, but it will be hard to pass this one up next time.

We chose this hotel after the reviews we found here, and we got a great price through Orbitz. We stayed for five nights during the first week of June. It was the perfect location for our stay in Chicago. It was very close to lots of great shopping. We loved the friendly staff, especially the doorman who we chatted with everyday. We broke the chain on our window shade in our room on our first day, and the engineer was in our room within twenty minutes and fixed the problem very quickly. We learned that the rooftop bar is the highest open-air patio in the city! It also had great views! We read the reviews about the slow elevators before we went, so we were prepared for the waiting. We were on the tenth floor, so we ran down the stairs several times to the 7th floor where we could catch the quicker elevators that services the lower floors. We will return to the Affinia on our next trip to Chicago, and we would love to visit one of the New York locations.

This hotel was perfect! The staff was so friendly and helpful and they could meet your every need. The concierge was incredible, too. There was absolutley nothing he didn't know about the city. He really contributed to our visit to chicago! The room was perfected in sanitation, design, and comfort. The beds are cozy and big, with a nice, soft matress, and the room has a very intresting contemporary design. And the room was SPOTLESS! The maid NEVER missed a spot! Never had service like that! While you're there, you are waling distance of the Magnificent mile, Water Tower Place, the Chicago Tribune Building, and the Chicago River. You're gonna have to use public transit to get to many of the other attractions though. Its about a 10 minute cab ride to any of them. Couple flaws - If you don't like elevators, request a low floor. The building was an office building, and the elevators aren't meant to work in a hotel. The elevators can get really crowded. They're small too. Another thing is that this hotel is across the street from a hospital. Sirens scream a lot around there. But overall, I LOVE THIS PLACE! Only hotel I would ever stay at in the windy city! WILL STAY HERE AGAIN!

Chicago has a lot of hotel choices with reasonable prices. We prefer boutique hotels and Chicago has a lot of them as well. We picked Affinia because of its location near the lakeshore where we wanted to go for morning runs and the price was unbeatable. About six weeks before our trip, the hotel website was offering a special rate. We booked and prepaid for a junior suite averaging $186 per night.

The hotel is located just off the Magnificent Mile so was a great location for shopping. A short walk south on Michigan Avenue will take you across the Chicago River to Millennium and Grant Park where we also wanted to go. And with the proximity to the lakeshore pathway, the location for us was ideal.

The hotel has a number of extra amenities including C Restaurant, a 29th floor roof top bar, in room spa services and a fitness center. We had a lunch and a breakfast at the restaurant and enjoyed a nice meal and pleasant service each time. The roof top bar on the 29th floor provided a good view all the way to Millennium Park and over the rooftops of nearby buildings on Michigan Avenue while sipping on a drink and soaking in a bit of sunshine. We did not try out the spa services or fitness center.

The room itself was very comfortable. Lots of room with a spacious sitting area and a flat screen tv which could be swung around to face either the bed or the sitting areas. The bathroom, like most boutique hotels, was stylish but small. A vanity area helped ease bathroom congestion. The hotel offers a pillow menu of six different types of pillows. I tried the Swedish memory pillow which offered extra neck support and supposedly eased tension. Hard to tell since I was on vacation and tension was not a concern. The hotel also offers experience kits. I took the stay fit one with a yoga mat, work out DVDs, etc. but did not use it much since we were running each morning. They also offer a walking tour kit and a picnic kit.

The room has a coffee maker and coffee free of charge. We did not sample from the mini bar nor use room service dining. We wanted ice and wine glasses had to request that each afternoon but delivery was very prompt. Housekeeping kept the room clean.

We found all the staff to be very friendly and helpful and could not fault the service at all. When we arrived, they gave us city maps and directions. They printed out our board passing at the front desk the day before we were to leave. The doormen were always very welcoming.

The one negative aspect was the noise from building construction next door. The single pane windows did not reduce the noise level by much, so it was noticeable each morning. If you want to sleep in late, which we did not, you may not want to stay at this hotel. Another minor annoyance was the elevator. One of the two elevators servicing floors 8 - 29 was being repaired leaving only one elevator and often some rather tedious waiting and then getting on a crowded elevator car. The other elevator is supposed to be repaired by the end of June 2009.