Ian's Travels and Everything Else » United Kingdom

Next on the list – Oban

Ian — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 12:18:15 +0000

I’m going to try and catch the train to this afternoon, around 4:45PM to Oban. It takes a while to get there, almost 5 hours. It’s supposed to be a very scenic ride though, so hopefully I can see some of it!

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!

Goodbye Edinburgh!

Ian — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 12:15:26 +0000

Edinburgh has been great fun, it’s a really interesting city and has a lot going on. It’s the second largest city in the United Kingdom after London, but all of the neighborhoods make it feel like a small city when you’re walking around. The history here is fantastic, and I’ve really enjoyed learning about what I can while I’m here – it’s all new to me and there’s lots to take in!

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!

Successfully en-route to Edinburgh

Ian — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:13:34 +0000

I caught a 12:00 train to from London King’s Cross station to Edinburgh (terminus: Perth) and so far there’s only been a bit of delay due to the cold affecting some of the signaling a bit before we reached York. I should be in Edinburgh by 17:00-17:30 or so, depending on how things go.

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