We got up to an empty apartment. Even though we said our goodbyes the night before I thought we’d wake up in the morning to see our friends off. But they were so quiet we slept right through. I missed having coffee with Valerie. She and I were the two early birds over the past 2 weeks.

We packed up and made our way to our next destination, Oban, pronounced OH-bin.
This is a fishing port on the west coast of Scotland. It’s name comes from the Gaelic language and means 'little bay'. Oban is best known as the 'Gateway to the Isles', because it’s a hub for tourists departing to the islands of the Inner and Outer Hebrides. That’s what we came here for.

We arrived in Oban around 1:00 but it was too early to get into our flat. So we went for a walk and lunch. It’s a nice town full of tourists from everywhere - Canadians, Americans, Germans, French, Italians, Asians...a lot of them are hikers.

While Vic was packing up in Edinburgh, he noticed he was missing some of his medication (don’t know whether it never made the trip from Canada or was left in a previous place) so we went to a pharmacy to see what could be done. He had to see a doctor and we got it sorted out. They gave him enough to last the trip. And it was free! But it took the whole afternoon so we didn’t get much sightseeing done - just walked between the doctors office, pharmacy and our flat (which, admittedly, took in pretty much the whole town).

We got into the flat around 3:00. And wasn’t that a surprise! The listing said it was small but this was ridiculous. It was like a coffin. We hardly had room to put our luggage in. And I screwed up. I thought we had a private apartment and en-suite bathroom but it was shared with the landlord. She was a lovely lady though. She put flowers & fruit in our room and gave us good advice on where to eat and what to do. But we were here for 3 nights. It will be a challenge.