Travel day - Ft. William to Rome, Italy

June 12:  This should be a short report.  We arose early to catch a bus from Ft. William to Glasgow.  We went back through a number of towns we stayed in while hiking the West Highland Way.  We next caught a shuttle bus to Glasgow Airport.  We waited to checked in, had lunch, easily passed through security and awaited for our gate assignment.  The flight to Heathrow was showing a delay of 20 minutes - no big problem.  We waited until an hour before flight time for the gate assignment and walked to the gate.

And then, our travel went south or sideways, and that is polite.  I had a few choicer words for it.

The delay extended to about 45 minutes, the plane was late in arriving.  Thank goodness there were no mechanical problems, etc.  But, then the building fire alarm went off.  All of the exit doors at our gate closed automatically.  After a few moments of bewilderment, we were herded to another exit door that led down to the ramp area along with everyone else on our flight.  The klaxon and an annoying annoucement continued until we all had exited.  After standing outside for 15 minutes we got to file back inside and were lined up for boarding.  No explanation given for the alarm.  We boarded the plane and the captain promptly announced that there was a baggage issue that was causing more delay.  And then, he announced that push back of the plane was further delayed by traffic control.  After an uneventful flight, we arrived at Heathrow.  We began dealing with customer service and airport security information that was more mis-information.  After being prevented to transferring to the gate for the flight to Rome, we were rebooked on a later flight.  We walked into the lounge area and saw on the information boards that our original flight was also delayed and passengers were being directed to go to the gate.  We trotted off to the gate and after some discussion got re-ticketed for our original flight, though with different seats (read this as "middle" seats).  The plane had not yet boarded.  We had enough time to trot to the bathrooms as they commenced boarding.  As I write this, we are awaiting takeoff about 45 minutes late.  Read ahead to find out how our luggage fared.

Oh well, no so good.  The luggage didn't make it.  We filed our baggage claim - we might see the bags on Tuesday or later. 

We negotiated a shuttle ride into downtown, checked in with a very helpful but quiet concierge and collapsed into bed at 1:00 am. We slept for 5 hours arising at 6:15 am.  The concierge gave us coffee, juice and fresh croissant before breakfast service actual started.  We decided to not wait for the luggage and instead use the pre-purchased train ticket to Monopoli, our biking trip start point.  Not sure what and when we will buy a few essentials.  

To be continued.