Day Four: Last Night on Islay

The evening of night four was our last night in Islay. I know that these entries have mostly focused on our daytime activities. This is partially because we spent our nights involved in a glamorous ring of underground criminals, but also partially because nights on Islay are usually a bit tame and not terribly photogenic. None the less, in the opposite manner of the last post (a mass of words rather than pictures), I've included a bit of what we actually did in the evenings during our time on Islay.

(all the pictures in this post are courtesy of E)

I have thus far failed to mention that E was suffering from a nasty head cold (with which I was to have a future encounter) for most of our time on Islay. This was a particularly cruel blow from fate, since he'd been waiting and planning for this trip for years, but he quickly adopted a quite British stiff upper lip about the whole thing and mostly successfully ignored his illness. This strategy did suffer a bit on the evening of our third day when E came down with a nasty fever and chills. It's rather tough to power through those. Additionally, Islay is a pretty quiet place, so the evening life wasn't exactly raucous. We were staying at the Islay Hotel and spent most two nights listening to music in the pub downstairs - night one was two people singing and playing guitar who, hilariously enough, chose almost entirely American songs. The highlight of that evening was a large, bearded man who declared E to be the "best chorusman in the house" after E obligingly sang parts of songs he didn't even know. The second pub night was a much more satisfactory grouping of two accordions, a mandolin and a guitar. The band was comprised of the following unlikely characters:  a rather thuggish looking twenty or thirty something gentleman playing guitar, a grave solid old man with a fine white beard on mandolin, a rather gypsy-ish looking late teen or early twentysomething girl on one accordion, and the manager of the Laphroaig visitor's center on the other. (*n.b. - the manager of the Laphroaig is a massive, solid man of probably his late forties. He, like many men on Islay, is heavily tattooed and quite friendly. Upon discovering that he both works for Laphroaig and plays in a local pub band, I decided that his life is that to which E must forever aspire. E, clearly, was in agreement).

We also spent one night lazing about and watching UK television, which might seem a waste, but please do remember: E was quite ill and had been doing a lot of stuff during the day, so having a quiet evening seemed advisable. It also enabled me to go on an adventure to the grocery store to try and procure some proper American orange juice (impossible, although the Tropicana was a great deal better than whatever they served at our hotel) and cold medicine (possible, although when I asked for something like Nyquil, the woman at the grocery store looked at me like I was a junkie and politely informed me that "They wouldn't make something like that here.").

Our last night on Islay was, unsurprisingly, a bit of a sad occasion. It seemed quite absurd that we'd be leaving already, and E and I went for a  walk around Port Ellen. We ran into a woman with two dogs, who alerted us to a beautiful public park sort of thing (it had to be pointed out since the access point involved walking through someone's yard) where we were able to walk up on some rocks by the ocean and overlook the water. The whole thing made me wish that I could paint in watercolors. As with most truly lovely things, photographs don't nearly do it justice.

Port Ellen

A small park closer to downtown

Our adventures by the sea (please excuse finger)

We tried to walk through the flowers all the way down to the ocean's edge, but the further we got, the more we realized that we had strayed into territory that had been clearly claimed by bees. We struggled on bravely for a while, ignoring the citizens of the area, but they increased exponentially as any semblance of a path disappeared, and we retreated to the hotel, to end our last night on Islay listening to accordions and making alliances with the Finnish.