Ping Londoners

I have a question. Tom and I are planning a trip to Burope this fall,
we're cashing in some miles and getting a free flight to London. Our
original plan was to fly directly to Rome, but apparently it's a very
popular destination and free flights are hard to come by. :)
Anyhow, so the plan is to get the free tickets to London and purchase
flights to Rome from London. We do plan on spending 2-3 nights in
London, since I've never been there. Flying out of Heathrow it's only
$150 USD per person, but flying out of Gatwick is twice as much!
My question. How hard is it to connect from Gatwick to Heathrow? Is
there convenient transportation available? Or should we try to fly to
Heathrow from the US? We would only need transportation from airport to
airport once.
Any advice would be most appreciated. :)

Monique Y. Mudama...

Victor, just saw this --

I would caution you to be careful with free plane tickets out of the
country. I got a "free" ticket with DH's miles two years ago, and
they would only give me one-hop flights, even though there is a direct
flight to Frankfurt on United! Grr! Then they ended up giving me a
flight with about an hour's layover. If I had stowed luggage, I never
would have made it onto the second plane on the way back. Your stuff
has to go through customs. As it was, I had to do some begging to cut
through the baggage line. And when you're jetlagged, the last thing
you need is to try to rush through a strange airport.

So, anyway, whatever you do, make sure you get tickets with enough of
a layover that you won't be freaking out about whether you'll make
your second plane.