Terrorist Attack?

Doubletree by Hilton
Cheltenham, UK

Last night was the scariest night of our lives.  I'll make this short as we had a very short night and we need a good nights sleep.

We are on the front of the building in a wing that has a very long hallway. Right before it was time for our three course dinner the fire alarm went off.  The fire door closed and Bill was on one side and I was on the other.  The alarm went off after a few minutes but not before people were coming out of their rooms in their pajamas.

The group dinner was wonderful and we came back to our room to get a shower.  As we started to relax after a very busy day we both heard something.  It sounded like a lot of gunshots.  We peeked out the window and  we saw what looked muzzle flash.  It was rapid sounding fire.  There is no way you could exit through the windows.  Bill immediately shut the lights out and all I could see through the peephole was people running in the halls.  We got down on the floor in the furthest corner of the room behind the bed.  I might add that I could smell cordite.  The noise lasted for
about 15 or 20 minutes.  No one at the front desk answered the phone.  We kept waiting to hear sirens or someone coming through to see if everyone was okay.  We heard nothing else the rest of the night.

This morning we found out that a wedding party at the hotel was responsible  for shooting off fireworks.  Management of the hotel came out to the bus before we left for Bath and Stonehenge to apologize.  

I don't ever want to have an "adventure" like that again.

Turtle Safely........