At 9:50 a.m. we boarded the Caledonian Brayside, a large ferry for cars and people to take us to the Island of Mull.  It was a beautiful although cool day--the water was smooth so no sickness here.  The views are wonderful--we even saw a ruined castle covered in vines! The trip took 45 minutes to get to the Island of Mull. We landed at Craignure and boarded a bus to ride across the island. The Isle of Mull is the 2nd largest of the Inner Hebrides, just smaller than the Isle of Skye. It is a beautiful ride across barren hillsides with sheep in the fields and also crossing the roads and every so often views of the sea. As we are on a tour bus we also saw how scary it is to drive on the teensy roads that the buses don't share very well. In fact we watched as the bus just forced cars off the road. Thank you Biff and Donna for telling us not to drive our car here!

    We stopped at the Port of Fionnphorr which is just a tiny ferry town where we boarded a smaller ferry to take us across to the Island of Iona.   It was very windy on the ride as you can see from Sandy’s hair (thank goodness I had mine cut short for the trip).  The ferry ride only takes about 10 minutes.

   The Isle of Iona is very tiny, just 3 miles by 1.5 miles and is famous as the birthplace of Christianity in Scotland. Once there we had about 2 and 1/2 hours to explore. We have to explore on foot as there are no private cars on the island.  First stop was the nunnery ruins which is considered to be one of the best-preserved medieval nunneries in Britain. After a quick walk through it, we headed to Iona Abbey and St. Oran's Chapel. The abbey marks the spot where Christianity arrived in Scotland and where St. Columba began his christianizing of the local peoples. St. Oran’s Chapel is the oldest church building on the island and there are some grave slabs carved in what is known as the Iona School style developed in the 14th century.  There is also a graveyard that is from the 13th century and many of Scotland's kings including MacBeth are supposed to be buried here.  

   As we are now hungry we looked for Dennis and Sandy to have lunch at the St. Columba Tea Room but couldn't find them. So we decided to walk back to the Iona Community Center where we shopped and then had lunch at the Heritage Centre--tea, filled buns, and pastries. It was lovely sitting outside and just listening to the sounds of the wind, the birds in the trees, and the faint sounds of people talking.

   About 2:45 we headed back to the port. We stopped to take a photograph of North Beach which is where the monks from the Abbey were taken and slaughtered by the Vikings. Sandy and Dennis arrived at the ferry just at 3 and then Dennis remembered he had left their backpack with their jackets and Sandy’s extra shoes back at the St. Columba Tea Room--oh no it's too late to go back as this is the last ferry of the day.  Sandy talked to the people at the ferry office and they said they would send the backpack on the next ferry if it was found.  That doesn't seem likely does it?

   We retraced our steps and arrived back about 7 p.m. in Oban. We decided to have dinner at the Waterfront Fish House. We had the early dinner which included a "starter" of soup--either lobster bisque or clam chowder. Then we each had different dinners and I had something new--Beetroot gravlax which is beetroot cured salmon. It was actually very good--so far we have had lovely seafood here in Scotland. 

   After getting back to our rooms we searched the Internet for rooms for the next couple of nights. We have decided to stay in a little town near Ft. Augustus on Loch Ness called Aberchalder. Dennis checked with the ferry company about the backpack but it was not found.  About 11 we turned out the lights and off to sleep with all the windows open so can feel the sea breezes.