After a wonderful breakfast overlooking the beautiful english countryside, skipped, because I slept in, the Epic crew and I manned our aircraft and departed for Italy. I was once again impressed with the Epic’s speed when we crossed the French coastline only 30 minutes after departure. The weather guessers had warned us of a line of thunderstorms and possible icing over the Alps so we all had our war faces on and were ready for battle. While we’d been looking at the radar during our morning brief we’d discussed the possibility of diverting east of the storms but seeing that it would add at least an hour to our flight time no one wanted to do that. It also might have something to do with the fact that we were heading to sunny Italy and had lunch reservations at some high class restaurant on the water that nobody wanted to miss.
The reported tops of he thunderstorms were 28,000 feet, which was our assigned flight level so we were expecting either a smooth ride or lots of bumps. My plane was in the number two position today and after number one reported deviating around a large build up I knew we were in for a rough ride. Of course I was wrong. By the time we got to where the big storm ahead of me was supposed to be, it had been blown down wind and we had a smooth ride and sunshine all the way down to the Med. Gotta love it when a plan comes together.
I could go on and on about how beautiful Portofineo Italy is but I’ll let my pictures do the talking. It’s that whole thousand words thing you know.
