We arrived at our hotel in Oban yesterday 45 minutes before check in time, and the desk clerk made us wait those 45 minutes rather than give us the key to access it. It wasn't that the room wasn't ready. But, rules are rules... That should have given us a clue as to what was in store. Constructed about 1895, the building has a classic Victorian frontage overlooking Argyll Square. It has been renovated over the years, but apparently not recently. Maintenance has been spare. The rooms are small, like the beds, US double size. There is no heat control, so all rooms are kept in the mid to upper 70 degree range. There is a window in the room that partially opens, but the drapes prevent ventilation. The floor slopes significantly from one side of the room to another. The elevator (at least it has one), is the slowest I've seen. The hotel overall has a shabby, but clean affect. Thankfully, breakfast was good, but it starts late, 7:30 am, not great if you need to get an early start on the day.
At any rate, today we did a lot of traveling. We started at the Oban pier, a short walk from our hotel. There, we took a ferry to the island of Mull and landed at Craignure, where we took a bus tour across the island to Fionnphort, where we boarded a small boat (about 20 people) that took us to the island of Staffa. It's name comes from the Old Norse word for a stave or pillar. The Vikings gave it the name because its columnar basalt reminded them of their houses, which were constructed using vertical logs. The basalt formations are certainly impressive and are part of the same geologic feature we saw in Northern Ireland at Giant's Causeway. We were supposed to disembark at Staffa, but a storm had
damaged the tour dock, so we idled for a bit around the edge of the island to take pictures, as the seas got progressively more turbulent. It was hard to get good photos standing outside on the deck as the boat was being tossed by the rough sea that was so bad that one of the passengers got seasick. We turned then toward Iona, the third of the Inner Hebrides islands to visit. The seas continued to toss our boat around, lifting us out of our seats more than a few times. That ride was as good as any Disney park ride for thrills!
Around 1200, the sons of Somerled – ‘King of the Isles’ – founded a Benedictine abbey here. Monastic life on Iona ended with the Protestant Reformation of 1560. Augustinian nuns set up a community here in the 1200s as well, and we walked through the ruins of the nunnery. Iona is beautiful and quaint, reminiscent to us of Iceland. We stopped into the currently used parish church and the ancient cemetery that's the reputed final resting place of dozens of early Scottish, Irish, and Norse kings, clan chiefs, and prominent figuresincluding (Macbeth and Duncan). The inscriptions on the graves are now all worn away.
After the Iona visit, we were picked up by a ferry going back to Mull, Fionnphort. At Fionnphort, we boarded the bus to go back to Craignure, a 35 mile ride that takes about an hour and 20 minutes on a single track road. The buses seem to fly down the road, even though there's traffic in the other direction. They pull off (!!) to the side, and the vehicles pass within inches of each other. We were impressed with the driver's skill.
From Craignure, we took another ferry back to Oban, where we walked to a cool restaurant for dinner, and then back to our crazy hotel.
Photos here
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