I’ve booked a bed at the Oban Youth Hostel, which looks very neat and is really inexpensive – 19£ including 4£ for breakfast. The building looks pretty amazing, like an old abbey. Take a look at their website:

http://www.syha.org.uk/hostels/highlands/oban.aspx

Tomorrow I plan to check out Oban itself, and figure out what to do for getting to the Islands of Mull and Iona – from what I’ve heard, it should be pretty simple and there’s frequent running ferries throughout the day. I hope to stay a night or so on Mull, which should be nice and relaxing.

I’ll try and update again once I’m in Oban! I haven’t yet uploaded any pictures from Edinburgh, perhaps I’ll get to do that some tonight as well. Bye!

The train has free (shoddy, but given where we are and what we’re going through – impressive) WiFi which is nice.

Checking the weather forecast shows that Edinburgh won’t be getting above freezing the next few days, with lows down to -13c! That’s about 8.6F, cold! Glad I got that coat when I did.

People on the train after our last stop (Newcastle – the last England stop) now have the distinctive Scottish accent, they say Edinburgh quite differently than I (try) to say it, and differently than the English say it as well. It’s more of just an “Eburh” than ed-in-bur-oh.

Here’s a picture from the train of some cooling towers in the flatlands of England, there were a bunch of plants in this one area. The geotag for the photo is probably incorrect – I think it got applied when I uploaded the photo vs when the photo was taken.

Cooling towers in England

Paris is definitely a fun town to walk around in, it’s all very inviting and (fairly) easy to navigate. The metro system’s great when you need to get somewhere quick, supposedly in Paris you’re never more than 500 yards from a metro stop – not bad! Managing not to walk right between all of them when you’re looking for one may be another story though!

Tomorrow I hope to go to the Louvre museum, since I got there as it closed yesterday (they still let you walk around the common areas and gift shops), and today most of the museums are closed for the holiday. I think I’ll let that be the end of my Paris experience, and then hopefully make it over to London.

I didn’t quite realize that the Eurostar train wasn’t like an extended metro train.. and it’s actually quite expensive (ouch) – rides out tonight (e.g. two hours from now) would be about $150.. and for tomorrow, well, a whole lot more than that.. I’m *hoping* that a last minute booking for tomorrow will be similar to if I were to book tonight. But it’s a bit of a gamble, although it really wouldn’t be that fun to be rushed and hop on a train in two hours (saving the cost, but adding to the stress, and loosing the cost of my hotel for tonight). There’s supposedly a discount of Eurail pass holders as well, but you can’t determine that or book it online, I’ll have to do it in person or via phone (and their phones are closed today!)

If it ends up being really expensive – I have a few options, I could get an obscure flight on Sunday for about $150 that goes though.. Denmark, or, if I can get ahold of him, visit an stay with my friend Tony in Sweden for a few days (with my Eurail pass, I could travel there for free) and from there either book a Eurostar train to London, or a flight to London or Edinburgh (since I’d have burned some of my time up)

Well, I guess we’ll see what happens, hopefully it doesn’t end up being too stressful or expensive! (Planning more would have been helpful, it turns out!)

The train ride over was great as well, it was my first time on a TGV, and they are seriously fast. Traveling at 160+MPH is quite the thing to do. I hope we can have trains like that in the U.S. sometime in the future! Quite a step up from the Talgo I took from BCN to Montpellier, and even the Teoz’ that I’ve ridden on elsewhere.

More pictures and updates tomorrow, for now I’ve had a great dinner and I’m ready for bed so I can wake up early and continue enjoying Paris tomorrow! Au revoir!

Hotel to Eiffel Tower

I had planned to be in Marseille before it got dark, but that didn’t quite work out with the train I caught from Arles, so that made navigating the town a bit harder, but I found a hotel that was reviewed decently by the Michelin travel books (yes, like the tires, too) and relatively close to a metro stop. It was easy to get to, and in a good central location – Vieux Port.

I hopped on a tour bus today and saw a good amount of the city that way, and it was also a nice way to learn about the history of the town that I likely wouldn’t have gotten other ways, not a bad deal! Afterwards, I wandered around some of the neighborhoods and a bit of the (incredibly busy) shopping districts. It’s a bit past 9pm now, and I’ve got to go and grab some dinner. More posts & pictures later!

One of two tram lines that run in Montpellier

Of course, I took some photos while I was there, and my GPS unit is still working like a charm! Check out the photos on a map here, and you can see what I saw!

Here’s a link to a map of all my photos from Montpellier

Here’s a picture from the RENFE train.