Ft William to Oban

Deanna typing here. First update from me for this trip. After leaving our Airbnb we started the morning by visiting the Highland Soap Company. Super cute factory shop with lots of lotions,soaps, and other bath products you can try. They even offer a soap-making workshop. They sell housewares, books, liquor, and there's a cafe on site. Across the parking lot from the Highland Soap Company is the 13th Centory old Inverlochy Castle. Unfortunately, the castle was fenced off, and it's temporarily closed because they're doing "masonry inspections", so we could only walk around the grounds.

We then visited yet another shop in search of the ever-illusive perfect souvenir. The perfect kilt is out there somewhere. :-) It was about lunchtime at this point, so we stopped at Aldi. We grabbed some very questionable "30% off" chicken sushi. Old chicken sounds sketchy on its own, but served with "sushi" in the name seems particularly iffy. We also bought nectarines, a chicken wrap, salami and cheese. Quite the smorgasbord. While at the Highland Soap Company, I picked up a book with recommended hikes for the surrounding areas. We were headed to Glencoe on our way to Oban, so I looked for a hike in the Glencoe area. Glencoe is famous for its deep valley, and we hiked "The Lost Valley of Glencoe" This is a 4.5km hike with about a 1,000 ft climb in elevation. This was a tough hike with lots of climbing over rocks, but after about 2.5 hours, we reached Coire Gabhail (a high level glen/hidden valley) which was surrounded by the mountains Gearr Aonach, Beinn fhada and the Bidean nam Bian. The terrain was described as "Steep and rocky path with some mild scrambling; great care needed." They weren't kidding. My knees are still barking at me. It's definitely an ibruprofen night.

We then went to our Airbnb. We're staying in the upstairs bedroom of a home. It's very nice. We asked our host for his recommendation for dinner, and he said that the Fishhouse was the best, but we'd need reservations. When Shane called, he was told that 8:45 was their first opening, so we took it. We both agreed that it was the best meal of our trip so far. I had the Trio of Seafood (Salmon, sea bass, and scallop), and Shane had the salmon. My dish swam in a lobster sauce which had us wishing we could lick the plate. :-)

It was close to 10:00 when we left the restaurant, and the sun was setting over the harbor. Just beautiful.

Another wonderful day in Scotland. This trip is flying by way too fast.