Glasgow to Oban
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Oban, Scotland, United Kingdom
So, when I left off yesterday, we were just looking for somewhere to go for dinner last night. Well, we really lucked out. We found an absolutely fabulous restaurant, the Ox and Finch (rated no. 10 out of 1500+ restaurants in Glasgow on Tripadvisor, for what it's worth) right at the corner of our block.
The name sounds like a pub but it is anything but. It is sort of fusion everything, with all dishes served tapas style for sharing. Everything was delicious and service was great--and it was not expensive! After dinner, we spent some time trying to find a place to stay for our next stop, in Oban, and lucked out again finding a great B & B where there had been a cancellation. Packed up in the morning after breakfast today and headed out on the road to Oban through Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park. We stopped near the north end of Loch Lomond at Tarbet and went for a little 1 hour cruise. Then we had a light lunch at the Tarbet Hotel, which proved to be problematic.
Turns out I left my jacket--the only one I had with me that I just bought for this trip--on the back of the chair when we left. We are going to have to make about a 1 hour detour when we leave Oban to go and get it. In the meantime, I bought another one today in town.
Anyway, I survived the drive along some really narrow and winding roads & we made it into Oban and found our B & B without too many wrong turns. We didn't get here in time to go for a distillery tour, though.
We are going to try to go tomorrow when we get back from our ferry trip to Mull. Instead we climbed up to McCaig's Tower, a strange Coliseum-like structure that a local eccentric had built around the turn of the 20th century.
We didn't luck out quite so much with dinner tonight. The rains started just as we came out of a pub that we had stopped in for a drink and we were wandering around getting very damp (I had already bought my new jacket, however). Our first 2 choices of restaurants were full (only stupid tourists would try to get into the most popular restaurants in town on a Saturday night without reservations). Oban is a really picturesque little town, though, and the sun broke through just as we took a step back and went for some very good fish & chips along the main street and then took the steep walk up the hill to our room.
Tomorrow, Tobermory on Mull for a day trip.
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