Bought the plane ticket!

I officially bought my plane ticket today. After a lot of research I decided on this itinerary:

• San Antonio (SAT) to Dallas (DFW)
  08/16/09
  5:20 pm - 6:30 pm
• Dallas (DFW) to London (LHR)
  08/16/09
  7:20 pm - 10:45 am
• London (LHR) to Chennai (MAA)
  08/17/09
  12:55 pm - 3:25 am

Return trip:

• Chennai (MAA) to Brussels (BRU)
  09/15/09
  1:00 am - 7:50 am
• Brussels (BRU) to Chicago (ORD)
  09/15/09
  11:05 am - 12:50 pm
• Chicago (ORD) to San Antonio (SAT)
  09/15/09
  6:55 pm - 9:45 pm

There were lots of options on how to get from the US to India. It looks like you could either choose to go through Europe or through Asia or the Middle East. For an English-speaking woman traveling alone, I thought Europe would be my best bet, even though it wasn't the least expensive. I had thoughts of getting stranded in Dubai or Singapore and not being able to communicate with anyone and did not like that option. So, Europe it is.

After I decided on going the Europe route, I got the idea of taking a side trip. I have heard that if you break up a long trip you are less affected by the time change and less likely to get sick. London and Frankfurt both looked like good options - I started to get really excited about the possibly of seeing Buckingham Palace! In the end, because of cost and time, I decided to go straight into Chennai. I'll leave Europe for another trip where Brian and I can explore together.

Many of the flight possibles had long (over 6 hours) layovers and many included overnight stays in New Delhi. On my first trip to India, I just didn't think an overnight stay would be good alone, so I found a flight that goes straight through to Chennai, which is why I'm getting there at 3:25 a.m. That sounds terrible, but what is really going to mess me up is that it will feel like 1 in the afternoon! Poor Brian has his first day of real work the next day, so I think maybe I'll need to take some Benadryl so I don't keep Brian up talking!

I chose all of my seats carefully after some talk over the pros/cons of a window seat vs. an aisle seat. I can sleep anywhere and will surely sleep most of the time on the planes, so we decided a window seat would be best so I could cuddle (Brian's reason :)). Brian pointed out I might have some problems because usually I have to rush to the bathroom, but he said it's OK since I'm small and can crawl over people.

On the long flights overseas, I actually opted for an aisle seat in the middle section. There were over half of the seats available on the flights so my hope is that I can have a whole row of 5 seats to myself and I can make it a bed! We'll see if that works out ... I can dream!

I booked through Expedia and opted for the travel insurance (after my cousin Linda's ordeal with losing her luggage for 3 weeks on her international honeymoon, I knew this was a must!). The insurance also covers medical up to $5000 and medical transportation should I need to get to another city or out of the country up to $15000. I'm looking into getting some additional insurance for medical stuff ... any suggestions?

Now that I have the ticket and the money is gone from our bank account, it's real!