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!

My stay at the Abbey Hotel was good, it’s up a hill a bit but it’s centrally located between the old and new towns of Edinburgh.

I met some great people while I was here, Jim, a fellow from Musselburgh was very kind and invited me to come along with him and two of his other friends last night to The Stand Comedy Club – that was great fun, stand up comedians from Scotland and Ireland – a real local treat! Thanks to Jim and Steven for showing me around, and I’m afraid I don’t remember the other fellows name – but thanks!

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

Here’s an article on the weather and problems:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/6937755/Winter-weather-brings-much-of-Britain-to-standstill.html

[Arg! This Internet kiosk crashed and I lost most of this post, so I had to rewrite it again]

It’s been a while since my last post, I’ve been in London now since Sunday, and I arrived with a bit of a nasty head cold – it’s clearing up now which is good, but yesterday was mostly shot – slept in ’til 2pm!

Since London’s so pricey and I was feeling miserable, I decided to use up some of my Marriott rewards points and stay at the completely obsurd Grosvner House J.W. Marriott Hotel, it’s amazing – certainly not something I’d stay at if I were paying! I guess traveling a lot for work has it’s perks,  3 nights at a 260£/night hotel for free – great! I can’t even have their continental breakfast there – it’s 21£ for cereal and fruit!

I just got my travel arranged to go to Scotland from the great Britain/London Visitors Center, very helpful people here.

Tomorrow, Weds Jan 6: Train to Edinburgh (Have a B&B booked there for 3 nights)

Sat, Jan 9: Train to Oban

Mon, Jan 11: Ferry to isle of Mull/Iona – may spend one or two days here, likley staying a night in Mull (I think all the lodging in Iona is closed during Winter)

Tues, Jan 12: Head back to Oban/Glasgow area to catch a ferry the next day

Weds, Jan 13: Ferry to Belfast, Ireland; and bus to Dublin

Sun, Jan 17: Flight back to Seattle!

London’s been great so far (aside from my being sick), seems like a very neat, livable city. Again the metro system is great, and the people all very nice. Seeing Big Ben and the houses of Parliment is quite the thing. I’m sure I’ll make it to Buckingham Palace before I head out, and perhaps tomorrow to Stonehedge, which is a bit out of town.

Well, for today I’m headed over to Greenwich (an easy metro ride) to check out the Royal Observatory there, hang out on the prime meridian (longitude 0!) and make sure my watch’s time is set right A bit of a geeky destination, but it seems interesting to me! I’m sure I’ll be here again some day to check out everything else.

I’ll try and post again from Edinburgh! Cheers! (As they say here)