A much-needed (and cheap!) respite in Chicago | Holly Christensen

Akron was recently heralded as one of the best cities for retirees because it's both affordable and livable, something Akronites already knew. A transplant myself, I frequently extoll Akron's friendly people, many parks with trails and, yes, affordable and beautiful housing stock.

Akron's low cost of living also allows me to do something else I treasure — get away. Many a February, I head to warmer climes to elevate my vitamin D levels and shift my perspective. Getting out of the forest, as it were, reminds me that trees are just trees and not to sweat the small stuff.

But this year I didn't leave the Midwest. Instead, I went to its de facto capital: Chicago.

I chose Chicago because of a French woman I long have loved. Like so many great women throughout history, Camille Claudel, who died in 1943, was all but erased from history. Fortunately, the 1988 release of the eponymous French film starring Isabelle Adjani and Gerard Depardieu launched her canonical restitution.

I saw the film 34 years ago just before traveling to France where I studied in a program that required students to visit five museums. What piffle. France offers a feast for museum lovers, and I visited dozens. But the art at the Musée Rodin so moved me, I visited it, and it alone, twice.

A prolific and talented sculptor, Auguste Rodin is perhaps best known in the U.S. for The Thinker, a larger-than-life-size bronze of a naked man, seated with an elbow on one knee, his chin on the back of that arm's hand. The Musée Rodin, located in what was Rodin's Paris home, has 20 Claudel sculptures permanently displayed in one room.

Twenty-four years her senior, Rodin was first Claudel's teacher, then her lover and artistic collaborator. With their sculptures in close proximity, it's impossible not to compare their talents, and even though it's like contrasting the work of demigods, I found Claudel's to be slightly superior.

The recent Camille Claudel exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago provided the chance to see 58 of Claudel's pieces. (The exhibit closed on Feb. 19 and will reopen at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in April). Unlike most museums worldwide, the AIC is open Mondays (as is Chicago's Field Museum and Museum of Science + Industry), which is great. Airline tickets typically cost less on Saturdays and Tuesdays than on Fridays and Mondays. Two round-trip tickets on Southwest Airlines were $372.

My companion and I arrived at Midway Airport Saturday morning, bought three-day Chicago Transit Authority passes for $15 each and took an Orange Line train to a station a block from our hotel. Cheap and easy. But the best tip is next.

CitizenM hotel chain provides a luxury hotel experience at an affordable price and, boy, do they deliver. I found them on Expedia.com when booking a room in Washington D.C. and was so impressed, I stay at CitizenM hotels whenever possible. Each room is only as wide as the king-sized bed nestled against the wall opposite the door, but because they are so efficiently laid out, the rooms never feel cramped. Located in the heart of downtown on Michigan Avenue and Wacker, I could see the Chicago River from the wall-to-wall window above the bed.

The off-season price for our room was $291 for three nights, which included all taxes and fees. Breakfast is not included, but the spread they lay out is decadent and well worth the $19 per person. In the evening, the same "canteen" has a full bar and serves a small selection of dinner options. Two 16-ounce local beers cost us $11.

After checking into our room, we walked to an Asian Lunar New Year festival at the Navy Pier and on our way back to CitizenM, stocked up on snacks at a Whole Foods that is larger than the one in Akron.

The TV in CitizenM rooms is over the die-for-it comfortable bed (after my first stay in D.C., I bought the same mattress for my home). Propped up on lush pillows (CitizenM ought to sell them to guests), we streamed the 1988 Claudel biopic. The movie holds up to the test of time and it prepared us for the exhibit.

More than 30 years after first comparing her sculptures to Rodin's, I again found Claudel the superior artist, hairsplitting though that is. (I wonder if she observed autopsies as the musculature of her figures is so accurate.) We spent two full days wandering the AIC, also enjoying other temporary exhibits — drawings by Picasso and a retrospective of South African photographer David Greenblatt — as well as AIC's tremendous permanent collection from ancient to modern periods.

And any visit to the AIC must include viewing the 68 historically accurate miniature rooms, think dollhouses on steroids, meticulously constructed during the Great Depression. The 1:12 scale project, managed and funded by heiress Narcissa Niblack Thorne, provided much-needed employment for out-of-work artisans.

Yes, we have top-notch cultural institutions in Northeast Ohio and I've visited them all many times. But only when traveling and unplugging from the chores of home life can most of us indulge in spending entire days at museums.

Now where to next? Hmm. New York City has two CitizenM locations and MOMA is also open on Mondays…

Contact Holly Christensen at whoopsiepiggle@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Chicago getaway cheap and entertaining | Holly Christensen