Iona Hostel

We arrived on Iona a couple of days before the program began at Iona Abbey, so we spent our first two nights at the Iona Hostel, which was a really delightful place. The owner, John, shared his dog and his car when needed and all the guests were very understanding of our children and interesting to be around.
The Hostel is as far away from the ferry as possible. You go to the end of the road and then keep walking 1/2 kilometer. We foolishly thought we could walk carrying all our luggage. Thankfully, a local took pity on us and loaded us and all our stuff up in his small car for the 2k trip.
Here's a view of the kitchen/dining/living room. Beautiful inside and out:

We had plenty of time to explore the island and it was sunny and beautiful our two days at the hostel. They let the boys borrow some butterfly nets and they spent all afternoon seeing what they could find.


We had plenty of time to dance in the hills,
and to rest in the pastures.


It was a fantastic few days.

We didn't seem to take any photos showing our daily life during the week we stayed in Iona Abbey. It was pretty cool to actually stay in the Abbey. Every day, we'd walk through tourists and museum signs and artifacts, walk through a "residents only" door and go back into our area.

The program for our week was less than stellar. However, the others who have been to the Iona Community said this was unusual and that normally things run smoothly and the programs are more engaging.
We attended a few of the daily services of the Iona Community. There was less of their music than I'd expected, and they almost always had an interesting active component to the service. In fact, for the first time on the trip the children ASKED to go to church because they didn't want to miss anything fun they might be doing.