We Are Leaving In ONE WEEK.

Let me tell you a story about international airline tickets.

They are very expensive. (Just in case you were wondering.)

We found a great deal on tickets to Russia for only $1300/a piece about a month ago, and we considered ourselves super lucky (we had budgeted up to $1500, so we were saving quite a bit. Not to mention we also had about $300 worth of points with our Amex card).

We booked them right away and got back to life.  Then...we found out that the tickets we booked didn't match up with the dates the company gave us for our visa.  We were scheduled to fly out AFTER our visa expired.

Staying in Russia as an illegal immigrant = not the best idea we've ever had.  Have you SEEN Russian prisons??

So, I called Amex literally one and a half days after booking the tickets and they said it would be a $320 fee per ticket to cancel them.


$640 bucks for ticket reservations we made less than two days ago?? Yikes!


 I called them back and told them under no circumstances would I be willing to pay that much for that.  Luckily, I spoke with a great supervisor who called the airline on our behalf and got them to only charge us $100/each to cancel the flights.  Still not happy about flushing $200 down the toilet, but it sure felt better than $640, that's for sure.

So. We learned our lesson.  We decided to wait until the visa was in our hands to avoid a similar (expensive) fiaso.  The only problem with that is that our visas STILL are not here, and in the meantime, every time I checked flight prices they went up.  $1400....$1500....$1600...ouch.



SPOILER ALERT: Don't panic, guys, it all ends well.

Instead of searching for flights through our Amex card, we searched for them directly through Delta's website.  At first, the prices were about the same, and I was about to pee my pants and sell my firstborn child.  Somehow, in the finagling of dates, times, and airports, I stumbled on a ticket for $1100/person.  For next Wednesday.

Forrrealz.

So instead of waiting for our visas (which would really be the safest thing to do), we booked them.  Here's hoping it doesn't bite us in the butt (again).  But really...how could we pass on tickets that were about $200 less than what we originally thought was a great deal, let alone what the current prices are?

We are supposed to get our visas back Thursday, so if we don't, I guess we'll pretty much be homeless.  You can find us living under a bridge somewhere here in Nashville.

j/k but not really.

Update: just found out our visas are safely on their way to us! Looks like our gamble paid off. It's a good thing, too, because otherwise all you people that are already mad at us for not having babies yet would be even MORE mad at us for giving away the first one.