Ode to Oban

I will start by telling you what I wish someone had told me: Scotland is awesome, people.  You must come visit.  We have only been here three days, and haven't gone very far, but I can tell you that Scotland is home to stunning scenery, amazingly friendly people, yummy food, and many a tasty whiskey.  It even has a bunch of craft beer!  I think it's fair to say that we will be back.

We have spent the past three nights in Oban, which is northwest of Glasgow.  I'll confess that we decided to come here because of the Oban distillery, but we have found much more: a cozy little seaside town where we have holed up and enjoyed some of Scotland's many offerings.  It gets really busy during peak tourist season, but was calm and cozy during this shoulder season.

It took us almost a whole day to get here, coming on a bus, then a ferry, then another bus, then a wait in Glasgow, then a train.

Goodbye, Belfast!

A Stena fast catamaran ferry, as viewed from our bigger, plusher Stena regular ferry that carried us across the Irish Sea

Riding the West Highland Railway in Scotland - beautiful scenery of lochs, hills and many, many sheep

We arrived late, and woke up the next morning to this view out our window.

While waiting for our distillery tour to start, we climbed up to this Colosseum looking building above town, called the tower.  Early in the 1900s, a banker/artist saw that many local masons were unemployed during the winter months.  So he commissioned this project to give them work in the slow season for several years.  It has some nice gardens and a great view of the town.

Then on to the distillery.  The Oban Distillery is one of the smallest in Scotland.  We had a great tour with a friendly, knowledgeable guide (far better than our tour of Bushmills last week).  I can't share with you any pictures of the inside, as Diageo doesn't want us letting out their secrets so we had to put our cameras away.  But this is the distillery, which has been in the centre of town since the 1700s.  It can't expand, because there is no room to do so!  They even have to age most of their whisky barrels elsewhere.

After a morning of touring, we headed for Oban Fish and Chips, which is acclaimed by a Scottish food writer as the best fish and chips in Scotland.  Chad says these are the best fish and chips he's ever had.  I was delighted to see this item on the menu: Macaroni and cheese with a side of chips.  Can I really have found a place where this is an acceptable thing to order?  Heaven!!

After a scotch/grease/carb induced nap, we spent the rest of the day wandering around town.  Oban gets a lot of rain, but we were lucky enough to have a sunny day - the wind from the north brought chilly temperatures but also (mostly) clear skies.  Come to lovely Oban!

I'm King of the World!  Or, at minimum, this windswept bluff.  It was hard to stand up straight with my jacket flapping in the wind, but it was still nothing like the winds in Northern Ireland.

Chad can be King of this castle - Dunollie Castle, home of the MacDougall clan for a thousand years or so.

We were lucky to get back to our hotel (on the right) before these clouds descended!