(Michael) Sadly, we had missed our ferry to the island of Colonsay, however now we had some unexpected time in the seaside town of Oban (which we later learned is pronounced more like Obin).
It was starting to get late, and we knew our first order of business was to find someplace to stay the night. Armed with Amanda's iPod Touch we wandered the streets desperately trying to find some wifi, and eventually found a little signal right in front of a closed pharmacy. We spent a while looking up a couple places (it was quite the toasty afternoon) and found a place that was reasonably priced and close by (at this point I was ready to be not driving around the tight busy streets).
We went up to the reception desk and talked with the not-so-happy Norwegian attendant, who was going to charge us a much higher price until we showed him our iPod with the lower rate. I give all credit to Amanda for the skillful negotiation.
So, we ended up with a room here....
After dropping all of our stuff off in our little room, we went back to roaming the streets to get a general idea of where we were (since we hadn't planned staying there and didn't have our trusted Rick Steve advice). Our first impression...lots of fish and chips and lots of elderly European tourists. It was a really warm evening so we got some fruit slushies at a little shop. Definitely not the cloudy misty weather we had been anticipating.
For dinner we just had more of our Scottish hard rolls and peanut butter. Sometimes we weren't very successful at getting meals at the little grocery stores because we could never find something light or recognizable enough. Also, a lot of the food at these places needed to be microwaved or cooked...I tried to think of a way to use the hotel iron to heat something up, but I figured that might be disastrous.
The next morning we went down for our complimentary hotel breakfast, and here is it....
Similar to the English breakfasts we had been eating, but with the extra excitement of a scoop of haggis. Not too bad actually, but I'm not sure if that was because it wasn't served inside the sheep's stomach or because it sort of fit in with the general weirdness of the meal.
Amanda got the black pudding, and it was also not too shabby even though it looked like that.
Before we left for our activities, I had to do one tiny chore. We had used the little metal trash can to prop up our window to get some air (and we especially needed that because we were trying to dry out some socks), but when I went to close the window, the trash can fell out of the window onto the fire escape below. Here is a picture of me quickly rescuing it before somebody got suspicious or upset.
We had some free time before our next planned activity, so we looked around an saw an interesting aqueduct-looking structure and decided to check it out. Not having any maps and not wanting to get lost with the car, we just walked towards it and blazed a path in a couple sections that were missing roads (hoping that we weren't going to end up in someone's backyard). And after not too long....
This is...um...well, let me check the internet....ah, McCaig's tower. Oh, looks like "this is a Folly built around 1900 by a guy called Mc Caig as a mausoleum to his family. Anyway the guy rounded up all the stone masons of the day ( who were all unemployed at the time) and offered them work. The job was only half finished when Mr Mc Caig fell ill and died! The stone masons in his honour finished the job.Mc Caig did intend the building to have a roof and statues to his family but this was omitted due to his absence and to lack of funds!" Thank you Tripadvisor, that was interesting, I guess we missed out on the actual history.
It was a beautiful day, and we enjoyed the view at a nice relaxing place compared to the previous week.
We decided to leave early to give ourselves extra time to find the place we had set a up reservation to go horseback riding. It was a wise move since they just happened to be repaving the one main road in Oban that afternoon. The place turned out to be a small farm owned by a family of a mother, father, and son. The father was really nice and accommodating, the mother was pretty grumpy, and the son was sort weird but good-mannered.
I have to admit that I was a little nervous about the whole thing considering my lack of riding experience. So when the lady told me to just hop on, I was worried that they had seriously overestimated my proficiency. Luckily, they hadn't and had the son lead my horse the entire way...that said, it was sort of humiliating. But if you look at the picture below, you can barely notice him...right? Amanda of course was a pro and navigated the whole path with ease. I could tell that she would have liked to have gone off galloping into the horizon.
The path was a nice scenic path that went around a bay and across a beach with a cool little 14th century castle. I asked a bunch of questions about the castle but it was hard to understand our guide.
Apparently when the tide goes out you can walk right to it. We only walked a little ways into the water, which was fine by me.
(Amanda) I definitely got the better horse of the two :)
Her name was Molly.
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