Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

I'm feeling the joys of travel once again because, well, it's half past midday here in Rome.

And I'm walking through Trasdevere.

This is a kind of slightly down at heel area on the other side of the Tiber from the main part of Rome at all the many monuments.

There is a beautiful basilica, Santa Maria, which is one of the oldest churches in the whole of Rome, full of mosaics, a joy to be your first place to come to

Rome. And I wanted just to tell you about how the journey was because I just think it's

useful to have an update and kind of get, just sort of set your uh set your thoughts about how travel could be for you this August

so flew out of Heathrow um at a price on British Airways that I thought was um challenging but uh

flame was absolutely full my, there is barely a seat

around. Let's talk through the process. So no paperwork for Italy at all that you have to do.

No checking. I'd only, of course, got cabin baggage. Wouldn't dream of doing anything else these

difficult days. Interestingly, John Holland K, the chief executive of Heathrow, as we were taking

off, was telling LBC radio, the problem seems to be people taking too much cabin baggage

with them because they don't want their bags to be lost and that slows the system down

anyway the security took five or ten minutes perfectly pleasant um he's row busy busy

plane left 10 minutes late or so that's the sort of delay that is completely neither here nor there and no particular hold up

some getting off the ground which is i think a result of the fact that there aren't that many flights

so we just row from gate seven at terminal five which is the far west, all the way to the start of the

northern runway at the far east and got there about 10 minutes and then then took off.

Now, the interesting thing was, it was a Spanish plane. It was operated by Iberia.

And that is because British Airways is a sister company of Iberia within Iberia. And that is because British Airways,

it's a sister company of Iberia within IAG,

...