paulred05

if you live close to the border, and most of Us Canadians do, try booking from the nearest US airport. I booked Buffalo to New orleans return for $160 USD last year. Toronto to New orleans was $600 CDN plus tax. Many local hotles offer free parking for a week if you stay one night. The airport parking was the same as a Taxi from our home to Toronto Airport, so no loss there, and customs was easier at the land border, than if it were an international flight. Note: this works well on E tickets. For some international flights ( I booked LAX to Melbourne Australia) they had to send me regular tickets. They won't mail them to Canada, so I had them sent to General Delivery to a PO just over the border. The tickets were sent by FEDEX, and the post office told me they usually refuse FEDEX packages, but the took ours, so you may have to call customer service and have them send them by regular mail. Note, I got Air New Zealand for $1000 less then the ANZ website price.

Booked an excellent 2* hotel in Ventura. La Quinta for $64 + tax. Good pool and whirlpool, clean rooms with 2 comfy Queen beds per room. Excellent breakfast. Located right off the highway 101. We landed in LA after a long trip and just wanted to get our heads down outside LA on route 1. greta deal!

I stayed at the Drake July 28/Aug 1 for $81 per night and was very happy. A charming old world hotel still in fine shape. Excellent location, no complaints. FYO The hotel posted a rate of $66.17 per night against my Hotwire deposit, so I suspect Hotwire was taking the rest of the $81. This may help when dealing directly with the hotel in future.