Poor Wayfaring Stranger

26 April
12:10 am

Pretty darn exhausted. After allowing myself the luxury of relaxing at the hostel--a little reading, some TV--I realised it was getting late, so I checked out and bolted back the few blocks to Euston station. By the time I located Platform 1, had walked four minutes or so along the train to reach my coach, and stowed all my bags overhead, I collapsed into my seat, sweaty and out of breath. I feel like a clumsy idiot, but at least I'm now on the train and headed north.

9:20 am

On the second leg of the train ride now, having switched trains in Glasgow. A nice man on the street spontaneously offered to help me with directions to the station (I had to walk from one to the other), and everyone else I've asked questions of has been kind and friendly. And it's a good thing, too--otherwise this trip and my time here so far in the UK would be more difficult.

Scotland is visually breathtaking. The landscape is vast, sparkling with lochs and its craggy mountains sprouting tall pines like some eccentric man's wild eyebrows. It seems most of the country is quite rural, and the towns well-scattered. "Welcome to the best (small) country in the world" a sign at Glasgow Central's station reads. And as I look at the broad landscape jammed with rocky, piny hights and run through with creeks and lakes and waterfalls, I'm inclined to believe it.

I realise what I'm looking at now-- Loch Lomond! As in, "the bonny, bonny banks of"! The song's not lying--gorgeous, vast water and wild, rambling mountains rising from it--this truly is beautiful.

The signs in Scotland, firstly in English, are supplemented by a language that is definitely Celtic, perhaps Gaelic. I'll have to ask.

"Eileanan an Aigh" (Islands to Inspire)
So, Tombermory: not a bad place to get lost, really. Had I not been in this situation, I wouldn't've stopped for a healthy-sized early dinner and gotten to try a pale ale brewed with chocolate malt! And Iona's not mad about the mix-up: they understand.

I still stick out like a sore thumb as an American with tons of very literal baggage, but no one's laughed yet (quite possibly they've felt sorry for me, though).