I can't believe I haven't written about this yet because it's honestly one of the best things that has ever happened to me so I need to remember it forever.
On our last day in India we had to be at the airport very early in the morning at 5am because Zach had a flight at 7:10 and mine was at 8:20. We hung around in the airport for a while, ate some cookies we bought from Subway the night before, and eventually had to say our goodbyes.
I was all alone when they paged me to go to customer service. "Oh God," I thought, "I'm going to get stuck in Delhi!" They took my ticket and left for 5 minutes. I was so nervous. When they came back, they said, "You've been upgraded to business class, m'am." I'll never forget that moment of sheer joy; I felt like I had just won the lottery. I actually did not stop smiling the entire rest of the time I was waiting at the gate and people were kind of looking at me funny.
It was finally time to board and you know how when they announce that the old people and babies can get on the plane everyone takes that as a cue that they'll be boarding everyone else soon and rushes into line even though they say over and over to sit down until your seat row is called? Well, I got to push past all of those people and get on the plane first. Haha suckers!
I got to my seat, which I can only describe as a "pod." The chair was round and facing the other way, I had a divider so didn't have to talk or look at the lady sitting next to me, and a foot rest. The TV folded into the wall next to me and had at least 50 movies, TV, and games. I was messing around with my seat when a flight attendant came by and said, "Would you like a fresh fruit smoothie before we take off, love?" (I was on British Airways). UMMM ABSOLUTELY I WOULD! I enjoyed my delightful beverage, was sprayed with insecticide (new regulations, apparently), the curtain between us nice business class people and those savages in economy was closed, and we took off.
We were all handed a menu at the beginning of the flight and they asked us what we wanted to ORDER for breakfast! Breakfast was 2 courses, not even kidding, and they came around several times with an assortment of fresh rolls and jams. My tummy was full; I had just eaten beef for the first time in 3 weeks and it was delicious. They collected my plate and handed me a little cloth bag. I had no clue what it was, but I opened it and had a mini toothbrush, toothpaste, socks, an eye mask, lip balm, sprays, creams, etc. I then proceeded to put on the lip balm, eye mask, and hand cream, and passed out with my real pillow and actual quilt the next for the next 4 hours in my chair that reclined all the way back into a bed.
I'm kind of sad that I fell asleep because I wanted to know what other kinds of free stuff that they would have given me, but I had stayed up all night so I was exhausted. When I woke up, they came around with drinks and I ordered some champagne because I figured it's an absolute must-do if you're sitting in business class, and now I can cross that off my list of life goals. I've never been so happy happy happy as I was on that 8.5 hour flight to London.
Heathrow is a nightmare but I have always wanted to be in London so I was still excited and walked around the airport listening to Lily Allen on my iPod because I found it most fitting. Unfortunately, there were no upgrades on my flight to Boston, and it made me realize how awful economy class really is. I was on the aisle and all I wanted to do was go to sleep, but they kept hitting me with that effing drinks cart, and the girl next to me fell asleep and was all up on me. I'm 98% sure that getting upgraded to business class in Delhi was just good karma after everything I did and went through in India.