It was a quiet day for we travelers today.  We had coffee and a light breakfast in our room then off to the air terminal to see if our prospective ride home on Sunday was still a go.  It turns out that everything still looks really good 😊!  The crew that we came over with are going back to San Diego on Sunday and it looks like there will be room for us to tag along.  The plan is to leave here on Sunday morning and stop for fuel in Shannon, Ireland.  (Just enough time for a Guinness).  Back in the air, we’ll fly to Portsmouth, NH and spend the night. (Crew Rest). We take off on Monday and head for Jacksonville, FL to drop off some people then on to Point Magoo, CA to drop off a few more.  We’re projecting our arrival back in San Diego at about 11:00pm on Monday.  That’s the PLAN………..we’ll see how it goes.  When it comes to space available travel, the only thing that is certain is uncertainty.

Anyway, while I was at the terminal, I ran into a great couple that we met on the ride over.  Rich and JoAnn Donaghy are from Irvine, CA and space-a veterans.  They didn’t have anything going today so we invited them to join us for a road trip.  They accepted and we were off.  We thought we would head for Taormina to have some lunch but it was early so we decided to go on past Taormina to Patti to visit Jean’s favorite pottery factory/outlet.  It was a nice ride as we shared travel and family stories.  We finally arrived to find the Calica factory, we so enjoyed, had changed quite a bit.  Jean found a piece she liked and we made our way back to Taormina for a little lunch, window shopping and a gelato.

All in all, it was a lovely day in Italy with new friends.