"This is where the fun begins"Aer LingusDublin, Ireland: The Battle of JetLagIreland: Wicklow and the last day in DublinOur London experience...Change of plans - I'll be in Scotland 'afore ye (Part I)Change of plans - I'll be in Scotland 'afore ye (Part II)The cross country tour: Edinburgh (Part I)The cross country tour: Edinburgh Castle (Part II)The cross country tour: Journey to Thurso (Part III)The northern adventure: Thuro, Stromness, and WickEdinburgh, Glasgow: To and fro'A few randomsOban, Scotland: The AC Choir and the ColiseumCraignure, Isle of Mull: Yeah...about thatOban, Scotland: Back to Oban / Queen's HotelWestern Adventures: Mull, Iona, Staffa, & Oban (Part I)Western Adventures: Mull, Iona, Staffa, & Oban (Part II)The finale: Last morning in Oban / Last day in Glasgow
 | Zathrak |  | Ireland, England, & Scotland |  | Oban, Scotland: The AC... |
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May 11 2010, 03:09 PM
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Oban, United Kingdom
After checking in, Jo had a nearly endless debate with the hotel keeper about just how we were going to get to our rooms. You see, Jo had discovered that yet again we were on the top floor of the hotel only this time, the staircase was in a very tight circle with very thin landings, like you see in the movies…but with plaid-green carpet. To be fair, it really was quite awful trying to get those stairs with our mobile bedrooms in tow. She just made it much worse than it actually was. So, being the manly one, I picked mine up and blitzed up the stairs to our floor, left mine at our door, went back in to the stairwell, took video of her panting half way up, and then proceeded to help her by carrying hers up for her as well. Of course, this kind of thing went on even afterwards when she couldn’t even pick hers up high enough to get it on the luggage rack in the room. Anyhow, the view is quite lovely here. We have the single best spot in the hotel I’m pretty sure. Out of our window is a direct lookout to the entire bay. It’s so refreshing to be able to see such serenity just outside of your bedroom. That is, until you go to take a shower or flush the toilet, both having just about as much water pressure as a rainy day in Michigan. Actually, that seems to be a problem nearly everywhere, and when you’re a hairy guy like me, that makes for a wastefully long shower. Again with the efficiency...if you upped the water pressure, you’d be out in half the time! Well maybe not half, but surely far less in my case. I digress haha.
The following morning, we moseyed on down to breakfast around 9am or so. All in all it wasn’t too bad. I had some kick ass brown sugar French toast and Jo had some weird looking eggs. Being that we’ve only been in the city since it was dark and our day had barely started, we didn’t really know exactly what we were going to do with the day yet, but we did know that it involved finding the Doc, Tony, and the Alma Choir that evening and hopefully see a performance. So there we were having a lovely breakfast on that lovely morning when Jo proclaimed with great relish, “Hey look! It’s Tony!” Sure enough, out the windows behind me, Tony and his awesome self was wandering by. As it turns out, the choir was apparently staying in the Cathedral which was right next door to our building! (I suppose that would explain why we later discovered a tour bus parked outside of it.) A few moments later, a few maroon fleeces came out of the door carrying luggage with them and shortly behind them was the good doctor himself! We had just got our breakfast served to us but despite the fact that I felt bad, I had to go visit them for at least hot second. We gathered that they were definitely loading up the tour bus and were likely heading elsewhere which if it were true, would make me really sad. I got up and made way for the tour bus. I go around the side of the tour bus and I was greeted with “Jesse Russell? I didn’t expect to see you come around the corner!” I got to see some very familiar faces, which of course include several of my sinfonian brothers and a few other distinct individuals that I was able to spend a short amount of time with during my senior year at Alma. Doc and Pam looked great as always, and everyone was obviously quite happy to be in Oban. During our meeting, I learned that sadly, their performance in Oban was last night when we were busy waiting all day for a second train to Oban. Had they not screwed us out of our original train, we totally would have made the show! Oh I’m still quite pissed about that one. Anyhow, it was pretty neat to find out that we were staying next door to the choir the entire night. I asked Doc where they were headed next and he had mentioned Inverness, which we had just been through a day or two before. He did mention that in about 10 minutes, they were headed to the Oban High School for a quick performance and then they were on their way. What really blew my mind was what happened next. From a short distance, the coach driver said “he might not be able to get in.” As it turns out, it was the exact same coach driver that we had 4 years ago during the second half of our trip! What are the chances really? This was exciting because if for no other reason, for one guy to be in that profession for all those years and still be around to take the choir on their next tour....how awesome. I don’t believe it was Peter, our first coach driver 4 years ago, but if my memory serves me correctly, he has a tattoo on his forearm and I believe it reads “Scotland the Brave.” If so, I’ve got the right guy. Either way, I’m 98% sure. Anyhow, Doc was all awesome as usual and had responded with “well if he’s with us, he’ll get in. ;-)” He then offered to have us join him on the coach and have them drive us there and drop us off in the middle of the city. How awesome is he? I sadly had to decline because we literally got up and went downstairs to do the breakfast thing all quicklike. We certainly couldn’t become presentable in 5 minutes. Hell, it would take us that long to get up the spiral staircase. Though, I did ask if he had an itinerary in the hopes that we could make something work. (Doc did end up bringing us one.) Then, Tony walked by and we enjoyed each other’s company for that short period of time. Pam had had made mention that some of her best and favorite photos of Doc were of ones that I’ve taken on some of our trips together. I’m still flattered that they think so. They were awesome pics though. The one of Doc overlooking the Oban bay is one I will never forget. He introduced me to the choir who were all getting their picture taken in front of the hostel that I once stayed in. Being able to be on the other end watching it happen was pretty awesome. I didn’t want to keep them any longer so I gave them my best wishes and headed back to the breakfast area where I told Jo all about it. We finished up and when we were done, we had seen that the tour bus was backing out of its parking spot so we went back outside to see them off. They all waved as they were travelling by. All of it was really just too awesome. Long live Doc, Pam, Tony, and them Alma College Choir!
Nextly, we decided to head out in to the town and see what we could find. We found 2 amazing restaurants, one Italian and one seafood which were located within 50 feet of the other. We got the times, read the menus, and made plans to visit both that day, one for lunch and one for dinner. We then ran in to a guy that was providing visits to a local seal colony for an hour for about 20 pounds total. We decided that seals are cute and we’d give it a go! So, we gave the dude his money and he recommended that we go to a local café/deli which was within viewing distance of the port and grab a coffee/tea/etc for the trip as it may get cold. We did. We came back and off we went. I won’t get too detailed here about it but we did see some seals doing some pretty cute sealish things. One of them was floating on his back in the water near the shoreline just chillin’. It was awesome.
We did the lunch thing at the Italian place and had some pretty good foodstuffs, though it did end up taking foreverrrrrrr as always. We left there and headed to the Oban Distillery to get one of our tours in. As it turns out, we had just missed that too. We literally walked in as the last tour group was exiting. We found out that the next tour would be the next morning at 10am. We didn’t really know if we could make that or not before we had to leave but we looked in it and later determined that we could make it work. We left there and tried finding our way up to what is technically known as McCaig’s tower but what I shall call a coliseum. We failed. How the hell hard is it get to a giant freaking structure of doom I ask? Well we decided to go to the tourism building and ask so we could figure it out. We were bombarded with information which really was quite nice for a change. Our agent was very informational. She gave us information on everything from their being 144 steps on the path to the tower/coliseum to the contact information to the former wildlife and recreation constable for Mull that would give us tours of the islands. With that, we made way for the tower/coliseum and got there in about 20-30 minutes. It wasn’t as epic as I was expecting but to be fair I think what I was expecting was somewhat unrealistic, so it wasn’t really a disappointment.
After all of that was good and done, we made our way back to the hotel and hung out for a few hours and tried to quickly digest our 2 days worth of backed-up food so we could go and fit in the seafood restaurant and we were so glad that we did. We spent a great deal of time there. While it was very full in the building, we ended up getting some very high quality seafood that was just to perfect to try and describe. It was accompanied by several glasses of wine/champagne and very good desserts. We would recommend it to anyone. That summed up our last evening in Oban. The next morning, off to the Isle of Mull.
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