Here we are again heading to Scotland for our 3rd trip. There is still a lot to see and looking forward to seeing this beautiful country again. The long overnight flight doesn’t get any easier as we age and I find it more difficult to get comfortable and get any sleep. We arrive in Edinburgh early in the morning and gather our luggage and head out to get our vehicle which is in the long car park which is apparently about a mile from where we picked up our luggage. Once we get to the car I have to become familiar again with having the drivers controls on the right side of the vehicle vs the left. I pull out of the carpark and am immediately reminded that I should be on the left side of the road and not the right. I’m sure it won’t be the last timeI get honked at.

We pack all of our luggage which surprisingly fits pretty well although I won’t be able to see out of the back window for the 130 mile trip to our destination on the Isle of Seil in western Scotland. The road trip is both enjoyable and also taxing. None of us got much sleep on the overnight flight and we find ourselves looking forward to our destination and a bed. We travel through some interesting and beautiful small towns and we stopped for Breakfast/Lunch in Callander and are amazed by the gorgeous gardens which appeared in full bloom and were full of various pollinators (Bees & Butterflies). We cannot officially check in until 4 PM so on our way we stop in OBAN to grab a few groceries for tomorrows breakfast. After a few wrong turns and some group discussions we arrive at our destination (Island View) and greeted by our host Claire. The place is everything it was advertised to be and we are looking forward to calling it home for the next 2 weeks – after a good nights sleep 1st.

Amazing what a good nights rest will do for the mind and body. Today we are all ready to get out and see the area. The weather is a bit unexpected for me based on my past experiences. It’s perfectly sunny with a light breeze and the temp in the low to mid 60s. We decided head to the island of Easdale today and all I can say is WOW. Easdale is a very small island that is only accessible by a ferry that holds a max of 12 people and has no motor vehicles or roads. It does have some quaint little cottages and some terrific trails that highlight the shale quarries that were in use years ago. After spending a few hours there we ferried back and had lunch and a delicious pint in the Oyster Bar Restaurant.

One other item of note and possibly – well not possibly but definitely our biggest issue so far is with the coffee. Four the five of us are Heine Brother coffee drinkers (AKA coffee snobs), so much so we brought 5 pounds of whole beans, coffee grinder, and French press in our luggage. Well, all went well until we forgot how to use the plug converter from a US plug to the UK plug system. So we went to a store in OBAN and purchased 3 cheap converter plugs, unfortunately for us these cheap converters do not reduce the current so that when we plugged the US coffee grinder into the converter it burned up the grinder. Luckily, or so we thought our host, Claire let us borrow a hand cranked grinder to use. The grinder was a chore to operated and the grind was either to coarse or a powder and you definitely had to work to grind enough beans for 4 people.

“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.”
—Ernest Hemingway