We got up bright and early, got a sausage roll from Gregg’s and then took a stupidly circuitous walk around Waverley Station searching for the Enterprise rental station, which ended up being two floors down in a parking garage (how I was EVER supposed to find that, I’ll never know…).
We got our little blue Kia Niro, I hopped in the driver’s seat and we headed (carefully) out of the car park and down the short, uneventful drive back to the hotel to check out.
We packed the car and began our drive to Oban. I got us most of the way out of Edinburgh before taking out a curb (gently) and getting honked at in a roundabout (my fault, should have yielded…). But we and the car survived and we got all the way to Stirling before taking a pit stop (I found a Gregg’s!).
Back on the road I slowly got better about the distance to the curbs and towards the end of the 3 hr. drive I was mostly able to stay in the lane (the country roads are REALLY narrow). The drive was beautiful and Dad took a lot of pictures along the way. I had to 100% focus on the driving because there was 2” of pavement between the curb and a sheer hillside in some places.
Arrived in Oban around 1 pm and found a parking spot at the hotel. We went inside to check in and as I got my phone out to check my email while we waited, I found that our tour to Mull, Iona, and Staffa had been canceled due to the poor weather forecasted for tomorrow.
No puffins. 😭
We got the bags into the hotel room while I processed that I had to scrap my entire plan for tomorrow and figure out what else we can do…in the rain. Dad and I decided to go in search of something to eat for lunch and found a cute little outside eatery called The Fish Box that had a rooftop deck where we got to eat fish tacos and drink beer while we enjoyed the beautiful weather.
After that we decided to walk down towards the docks to look at all the fishing boats while I was searching for alternate tours for us to go on. I found a little shop and got a necklace for myself, and then just as we get to the docks we see a sign for a boat tour to see the seals that was supposed to leave 20 minutes later. We grabbed tickets and a short while later we were out on the boat with a ton of French folks, getting to see a bit of the islands. It was a very pretty day and I was glad we got to go out on the water in Oban before the weather turned bad.
There was just one seal but he was silly enough to be entertaining and we got to see a lot of very neat houses that were built along the coast of the islands. As we were heading out they showed us one of the salmon farms out in the bay, that had 30,000 salmon per pod, and there were at least 10 pods set out. So. Many. Fish.
Had fun on the boat and got to take some pictures of Oban on the way back. There was a little shop that had the full stock of clan tartans and I was finally able to find Armstrong after my frustrated search through Edinburgh for the past two days…
We got ice cream and sat by the sea to watch the boats and the tide come in for a little while. On the way back to the hotel we stopped in an outdoor shop to get some rain gear (definitely going to be necessary very soon…) and then went back to The Scot to crash for a bit. It’s been a long couple of days and I’ve been walking Dad’s legs off nearly every day since we got here…
We stepped out for a bit of dinner and then headed back to the hotel to relax some more.
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