Edinburgh to London and overnight at Heathrow
Trip Start
May 13, 2008
1
4
16
Trip End
Jun 26, 2008
London,
England,
United Kingdom
Saturday, May 17, 2008
When we went back to our room (sadly) to pack our things and were greeted by a new roommate. His name was James and he was born in England but lived in Aberdeen. Robbie, Jill, and Jenn spent an hour and a half talking to our new friend until we decided to get out of the gross hostel and go pubbing for our last couple of hours in Edinburgh. We walked a bit to find a nice old-fashioned pub and tried some local beer and Scottish sipping Whiskey. We had planned on buying phones before we left for the airport, but we were having so much fun talking to James and Robbie that we kept pushing our time to leave back. We finally decided we had to leave (about 45 minutes later than planned) and got on the bus to the airport and somehow managed to pick the slowest line for security. At this point, Jill was a little worried about missing our flight and we had a rushed dinner and ran to the gate. We got on the flight safe and sound and Jenn knew Jill was worried for nothing!
The flight really did go smoothly, we just had a really LONG night ahead of us. Because our flight for Rome connecting to Cairo left at 6am and our flight arrived in London at 10:45pm we decided it was best to remain at the airport. This become quite complicated as we had no idea Heathrow actually completely shuts down after 11pm. We tried to just fall asleep in the terminal we arrived in but were escorted out and told we had to leave because the entire terminal closes off and they do alarm testing. Whatever that means. We were pretty much escorted across the entire airport through 3 terminals to a more open area seemingly designated as a sleeping area. After all the hassel we were able to snuggle up and try to get some sleep. The temp dropped pretty low at night and we were shivering all night! As the alarm woke us at 4am to go check in for our flight we say that mysteriously everyone around us managed to acquire a cosy neon colored blanket while we had none...they definitely didnt have them the night before so the blanket fairy must have just passed us by!!!! >:(
As we tried to leave to find the Alitalia check in desk we were told we were locked in and couldn't leave until 4:30am. This worried us a bit but the English lady assured us we would be fine. Once 4:30 came, the doors were unlocked to let the neon blanketed prisoners out of the sleeping quarters and we were able to locate the terminal 2 alitalia desk. Just as our luck would have it, no one was there and we were given a tip that the desk doesn't open til 5am. Ok. So we wait. 4:45 we still wait. 5am hits and we get excited that maybe the desk will open! Nope!! As the minutes before our flight roll by we grew steadily more nervous sick and tired of having close calls!! There is no one in sight so Jenn more urgently encourages Jill to DO SOMETHING!!!! Jill being the cool calm and collected person she is goes and starts running down the hall of terminal two. She actullay found security and saw the alitalia desk on the opposite side. We were on the wrong side of security to check in because we had spent the night in another terminal. The security guards said we could not go back through so she ran back to Jenn and we grabbed our stuff to find someone to tell us what to do. It was now almost 5:30am and we still were not checked. Mind you also that we had our Egypt tour beginning that night and missing this flight would be treacherous at the least!!! We found an intelligent gentleman with a walkie talkie who actually gave us some fantastic advice. "Um just go to the gate, and they should be able to check you in there, right?" Wow. Doesn't that make sense?!?! So we take off for the gate and gate and after only minor questioning and some computer difficulties we get our boarding passes through to Cairo...phewww!! We board the plane within the next 5 minutes and find ourselves finally able to breath. Off to ROME!!!
