Not going anywhere fast

Well here we are at the check in line for our flight on Iberia. We've been in line for 2 hours and there's no end in sight as the whole check in system is completely dead. Several technicians have been called to help, but nothing yet. 

Ugh! Why does every trip start like this?

Update: after 3 hrs in line we are finally at the gate. The bad news is that the check-in process is being done manually with hand written boarding passes and bag tags. Stay tuned to see if we are reunited with our luggage in the near future.

Having a much deserved glass of wine at Vino Volo while the other 300 passengers are written in. It's going to be a long night.

Update: we arrived in Madrid nearly 3 hrs late so missed our connection to Bologna. We were reticketed on a flight leaving this afternoon, which results in a 7 hr layover here. Some good news: Iberia gave us free lunch vouchers to be used at any restaurant in the airport, and we are now comfortably settled at the Iberia VIP Club. Here they have free coffee, snacks and cocktails, so we should be okay till we head out for lunch.

Still this is giving us heartburn as we had to change our meeting time with the caretaker of our rental, the car rental reservation and the time of our dinner reservation tonight.

Final update: we arrived at our rental in Lucignano at 9:30 this evening, met the caretaker, dropped our bags and headed out the door to find some dinner as we were starving and in need of wine. Just about 8 doors down is the simple, family run Schicchero, which allowed us to come and eat even though we were the only people there and they had already started cleaning up for the night.

An antipasto Toscano and a plate of homemade pasta with Bolognese straightened us right out and changed the mood immensely.