Canada & the trip to LA - some problems, long post, but has a happy ending, so read on and post some comments so we'll know someone's reading!

Hi all,
We had a long and a bit rough 3 days. We managed to get our car towed away, our flight got delayed 2 hours and we ordered a shitty hotel in LA. Oh yeah, and the car rental turned out to cost twice as much as we expected.
Well those are the bad news. The good news are we are currently in LA, in a nice hotel, on sunset blvd, and today is st. Patrick's day.

OK, so here's what we did in the last 3 days :

15/03 - Canada, Thursday

Day 3 - CN tower and Niagara Falls

We went to the CN tower - the biggest tower in the world, and apparently was built to be used as a TV transmitter. Everyone told us we had to go there, but we actually were a bit disappointed, because it was a little boring.
Afterwards we went to rent a car - the girl in the rent-a-car agency was really nice and sweet, it was fun, and we got a ford focus station :) (see pix)
We hit the roads for the first time in our trip and headed to the Niagara falls. That seemed like an easy task, but it wasn't. We had trouble selecting the correct destination in the GPS, but after about 2 hours, and a few trys we found them !
The falls were really overwhelming and great to look at. We forgot to mention there it was -2 degrees that day in Canada - so we were a bit cold. Even though we enjoyed it, and of course a hot chocolate milk (from "Tim Horton's" - thanks Ran). Near the falls there was ice, u can see in our photos, the outside of the Tim Horton's was ice, and also near the falls some of the water was still frozen. We found it special and pretty. Since it was off-season and since we got there a bit late (around 18:00) there was not much to do there beside for watching the great falls. We were told that the lights of the falls will be on at 19:30 - so we waited to see it - it was suppose to be really beautiful. We waited until 20:00 when we gave up on it... no light no nothing. We started our journey back to our hotel tired but satisfied (we bought a brand new american tourister green suitcase on the way back!). When we got to our hotel we needed to park the car, we read a sign saying we can park on the street until 9:30 in the morning, so we parked it and went to sleep.

16/03 - Friday, Canada & the trip to LA

Day 4 - Canada, En-route to LA

We got up in the morning, Elad looked through the window and said: "Puki, well, remember where we parked the car yesterday ?" and I said: "yes" and he said: "well, it's not there anymore"... after a few phone calls we found out our car had been towed away :( that was a bummer... So we figured out we at least don't have to worry about parking space, and started packing our things. When we finished we took a taxi to pick up our car and pay the fee, and then we went to eat our first real good meal. It was awesome, and of course fried :)
Then we returned the car and took the bus to the airport, and so began our trip to LA.
We did a web-check-in before we came to the airport, and selected our seats, but we had no place to print our e-tickets. When we entered the airport we found there are self check in machine - the coolest thing ever - it's a small computer used to check in, and it prints u'r ticket. We were happy ! Then we found out our flight got delayed for 1 hour. We went through some strange USA security checks and searched for the duty free - that was lame, so we just drank tea and ate and waited for the flight.
When we finally got on the plane it was already 1.5 hours delay, and even than the plane didn't took off. Because of the bad weather conditions (-5 degrees and snow blizzarad starting) the plane had to get de-iced. All in all we departed 2 hours later than we were suppose to.
We both couldn't get any sleep on the flight...
We landed around 22:30 LA time (that's 01:30 Canada time (7:00 israel)) so we were tired.
LAX is crazy !!! There was a big mess and too many people, it was not what we expected from the US. No lines, no nothing, just a big chaos. We went to get our car, and we found out that instead of 940$ it will cost 1600$. We decided to sleep it over. Elad did a combina and we got ourselves a free ride to our hotel. Since it took us 20 minutes, and we felt guilty, we tipped the nice lady 20 bucks. When we got to the hotel we found out we need to go to another part of it, 7 minutes of walking with our bags, at night, in scary dark LA. When we reached there and got our room (we had to go through some girl's room) we were more than disappointed, it was a real shitty hotel, and it stank with pee smell. We decided to sleep and evacuate in the morning. We didn't even unpack. I sniffed the bed, and decided it's OK :)

17/03 - Saturday, LA

Day 5 - LA

We got up, got dressed and went to try and checkout. Since we didn't find anyone to talk to, we went to eat nearby. I felt sick and my thought was sore... When On our way we saw many signs in Hebrew and as it turned out even the restaurant we ate in was a Jewish deli. I ordered 2 eggs and Elad ordered a pancake. We got 3 eggs and 5 pancakes - are they fat or what ??? It was a great breakfast. We went back to the "hotel" and tried to checkout again - but there was no one there to talk to. So we started walking to check another hotel we saw on the net. We were walking and walking (uphill), and we stopped in some places on the way. We found a health food supermarket and bought an all natural cola (tastes like cola) and a red banana which Elad later described as the taste of dry, we had to throw it away after one bite. After a lot of walking we got to the hotel, and booked a room. Then we looked for a place to rent a car for 1 day, so we walked more, and we got into a strange car rental place, there was a cool Afro American guy there, we pointed on a car and he told us strange things like : "oh, this one, this one has no radio", "this was recently returned - donno y...", "this one has vibrations" - we decided to look for Budget agency. We went to Hollywood blvd, the street was closed for traffic and there were many people there - some of them protesting the war in Iraq (see pix). It was nice and cultural. The Budget branch was closed :(
Since we got tired of all that walking - we were walking for 2-3 hours I think maybe even more - we wanted to catch a bus. It seems that buses only go in straight lines in LA and we needed to get left and down - 2 straight lines. So we had a lot of trouble finding a bus, and even when we found it we waited a lot of time. At last we got to the "hotel" checked-out and took a taxi to our new hotel. This is where we are now (see pix).
So all is good at the end.
We still donno what to do with the car (or a cell phone, or a bank account), but at least we saved 2 days money since we are without a car. Oh, I forgot to say, we tried to open a bank account, and it turns out to be real easy - except that we can only get the debit card by mail and it takes 10 working days - so we need an address close to where we'll be in 10 days - wherever that will be.

We have some other anecdotes to tell u about, but we're hungry, so we'll write them later (maybe, if you're nice :) ).
Bye bye for now.
pix embedded in post, enjoy...