2 June 2004

Woke up about 08:30 this morning, and discovered that our two Spanish guys had been replaced by two college age girls, something I'm not used to waking up in the same room as. The old lady was still there, though; yay for constancy.

As far as Rob and I knew, we were leaving on the 10:45 ferry, so we decided to take off from the hostel @ 9:45 to give ourselves plenty of time. About 2/3 of the way to the dock, an old couple pulled over and asked if they could carry our luggage for us. We said "thank you very much," loaded our stuff into their truck, and, seeing that we still had over half an hour till our ferry left, took the rest of the way at a leisurely pace.

When we got down to the docks, we saw everybody else frantically waving and yelling for us to get on the ferry. Not knowing what was going on, we grabbed our bags and got on board. Turns out that Chelsea, through the reading of a sign & questioning of some random person, got the impression that the bus across the Isle of Mull was leaving at 10:30. She freaked out and freaked everybody else out, so there we were. We made it to Mull in plenty of time for me to entertain myself by watching the 10:45 ferry make its way across the narrow channel, some 45 minutes before the bus left. While I enjoyed being right, we would've had to sit around and wait at one point or another anyways, so it wasn't that big of a deal.

I can't remember whether I already complained about one lane roads, so I'll do it here. One lane roads are a bad idea, especially for a 45 minute drive. Oh sure, there are little pull-out areas where people can get around each other, but that's not really enough. And with the speed our bus & all the other vehicles were going, it's a miracle there were no accidents.

Back in Oban, we had time to settle into the hostel again and head over to the distillery for a tour. Unless you're faculty at Whitworth, in which case we never even realized that Oban produced whiskey. The tour was informative if a bit smelly, and the whiskey itself wasn't half bad. I'm not really a whiskey expert though, so it's entirely possible that it wasn't half good either [ed: it has since become my favorite whiskey].

Dinner at some little cafe that probably hates Americans now; we got in about 10 minutes before closing. Bwahahahaha! True, having to work past closing time sucks, but they were still on the clock, which means more money, which is usually a good thing. Had some sort of sandwich and some chicken & rice soup, and then we were off. A large part of the group decided to go see the new Harry Potter movie, but out of principle, I decided not to. Wandered around for awhile, found a cool garden [ed: at McCaig's Tower] up near the top of the town, but then it started to rain, so it was back to the hostel. Worked on some of Barb's assignments till about 22:30, when it was time for bed.