We knew we'd be leaving the Marriott today, so we went online and got (what we thought) was a great deal at the Ramada Inn Orange County, in Santa Ana (just a few miles north of where we had been) - our home for the next two weeks (until Jem flies home). The Internet is great for finding "cheap" deals, but also has the ability to masquerade the actual quality of the product you're purchasing - which you'll understand as this journal progresses!

[There was a good reason for choosing a hotel in this area - Jemma had booked herself on a scuba-diving course - something she's wanted to do for a long time, and seemed like the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the many centres on offer here. As Jem doesn't drive, staying at a hotel near the scuba-centre made sense - saves money on cabs!]

So, our Sunday started with a check-out nightmare at the Marriott - we'd had a superb stay, but (as with most hotels) there were some stealth charges, which I brought to their attention in no uncertain terms:

a) $9 a day to use the car park. Now, I have no problem with paying for the days I had used the facility, but they were charging me for EVERYDAY - even the weekend we were in Vegas, when we couldn't possibly have used it!! I advised them to reduce the charge from 21 days to 10 days - a decent compromise I thought!

b) $9.95 a day to use the Internet. Again, we'd been charged for virtually EVERYDAY - 10 days was agreed for this too!

c) $0.08 a day "tourism tax". Unfortunately, there wasn't much I could do about this - and I know it's a small amount - but it's something that's been enforced by the Governor of California, Gray Davis. He's the dude who Arnie's trying to replace - and with this stupid tax, Arnie gets my vote any day!

I think if I'd pushed the dude further, we could've had 90% of the bill written off, but I'm happy to pay for what I've used - nothing more! We left, and headed to the baseball - last game of the season, and a chance to win $1,000,000 - WOW! [The game was actually a sell-out, so we couldn't get tickets online, or through the ticket agency - but luckily, there was some tout on the way to the stadium, who sold us 2 seats for slightly more than retail price - he wanted $60, I wanted to pay $40, so we settled on $50 just before the coppers drove past -result!!!]

The game was pretty cool - that's 4 games we've seen, and they've won 3 of them, so we've been good-luck charms! And the whole $1,000,000 thing was a bit of a joke! All game long, they'd been giving away prizes by seat number - literally hundreds of decent prizes - weekend breaks at top hotels, health-club memberships, free Domino's pizza for a year (not too sure how that would've worked if I'd won!!). Out of all the ticket numbers they drew, 3 were picked to enter the competition for the big prize - the participants had to throw a baseball through a hole - the further they progressed, the smaller the holes got, and the distance to the target grew - until the final $1,000,000 hole, where they had to throw through a 4-inch (diameter) hole, from 90 feet - absolutely impossible, but hilarious to watch 3 Americans fail abysmally at a sporting-type event!!!

We're excited about getting to our new hotel, so we head straight there - BIG, BIG disappointment. It's in the heart of "immigrants-ville" - yep, sweaty Hispanics everywhere! But I'm not a racist, so we head to the reception, and walking though the door we're suddenly transported back to the late 1960's - this place doesn't look as though it's been cleaned, let alone decorated, since the days of the hippies! "You should feel right at home then", I hear some of you say - but believe me, this place was scummy! I'm not above my station or anything, but this place was just sooo bad! But we've already paid for it, and the room might be nice, so we check-in - mistake number two...

... the room DOESN'T have the queen-sized bed we'd ordered, and it wasn't a smoking room - not massive issues I know, but it was dirty, scummy, and the sort of thing you'd expect from a $2 motel room than a RAMADA hotel! Jemma went downstairs immediately to sort out the room we'd paid for - the Sri-Lankan on reception informed her that the only queen-sized room they offer wont be available until tomorrow, so it looks like we'll be slumming it for one night - oh how little we knew...

END OF DAY 30