Sun June 9 - 8:40 (Edinburgh Part 1)

These last 2 days (June 7 & 8) flew by! I didn't even get to write in my journal because Ricky and I filled our days with activities. On Friday we woke up at 8:30 or 9, got breakfast, then went to the Museum of Edinburgh on Canongate Street. It was filled with artifacts from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Most of which was silver/silverware items and they had gold crafted items, glass items, and painted ceramics.

After leaving, we walked by an interesting silver jewelry shop and I bought Barbara a Thistle necklace. The area of Canongate was known for silver making in the previous centuries so I figured it would be a much better jewelry store than a souvenir shop on a main street that sold cheaper, more expensive jewelry. We saw a fudge store so we got a small piece before finding Drummond Street on our way to the Museum of Scotland.

The Museum of Scotland was huge and we could have spent a long time there. We decided to just look at the Scottish exhibits and Scottish history exhibits rather than everything. After we left, we passed by the Elephant House, which was the restaurant where J.K. Rowling started writing Harry Potter.

It was very crowded there so we had lunch at Pizza Express which we needed since we were about to go to the Scotch Whiskey Experience.

We took the gold tour at the Scotch Whiskey Experience and learned about the entire whiskey making process. It was very interesting. The barley and water mixed and fermented before a long and multiple distillation process. Then the whiskey is put into barrels- made by Coopers- and aged for how ever many years. For each year spent again, the whiskey loses 2% of its volume due to evaporation. After 25 years, it loses 40% of its original volume (so the percentage is not exactly linear).

There was a presentation from an entertaining man who explained to us the different regions where Scotch Whiskey is made. The 4 main areas are the Lowlands, the Highlands, Speyside, and Islay. The Lowlands single malt whiskey is generally a smooth whiskey with hints of citrus. The Highlands has elements of vanilla and a nutty aftertaste. Speyside is where 50% of single malt whiskey is made and it is comprised of fruity flavors. Islay is an island so the whiskey barrels absorb the sea air into the flavor, but it is mostly defined as peaty or smokey. Peat is the type of fuel they use for the fire when first cooking the whiskey before distillation. These are known as single malt scotch. The scotch from these area are generalizations of the kinds of flavors they make so all regions can create single malts with other regional characteristics.

Blended Scotch is a mixture of 70% grain whiskey as a base and 30% of the single malts for complex and unique flavors. A blended scotch whiskey can have from 10 to 30 different single malts in it. I thought it was interesting that the age of a blended whiskey is based on the youngest single malt, so a 12 year-old blended whiskey can have single malts that are 12-years, 15-years or 18-years old. I sampled a Speyside and got a free whiskey glass during the presentation.

After it, we went into a room with the largest private collection of scotch whiskey in the world. It was remarkable that no bottle was the same.

In that room, we were taught how to drink whiskey. First, you examine the color. Then you swirl it around the glass to look for the legs. The more legs it had meant it was a lighter bodied whiskey. If it had fewer legs, it was more oily. Next you smell the whiskey, bringing it to your nose multiple times since the first time you will smell more of the alcohol and the other times you can pick up the finer aromas. Finally you taste the whiskey by letting it sit on your tongue for a couple seconds. Some people like to add a few drops of water to dilute it, which is all up to personal preference. There is no wrong way to drink scotch.

After the tasting, we went to the bar and tried a single malt from each of the 4 regions.

They were all tasty, but the peaty Islay needed some water since it was very strong in flavor. Since we were on the gold tour, we got £3 off any bottle in the store. Ricky got a bottle of the Dalwhinnie and I got a bottle of the Dalmore.

We hiked over to the National Gallery of Scotland before it closed and saw some of the paintings.
We met up with Ricky's friend Alex Canty and went to the Three Sister's Pub, where we got hotdogs and "chips" (fries), and beer. We watched the Scotland vs. Croatia football game. Scotland won 1-0. The line was long when I tried to get Ricky and I another beer so I ordered us each a 2-pint beer. It was massive! We went on a bar crawl and hung out at Alex's hotel before heading back to our hostel. We immediately passed out once we got to our rooms.
In the morning, we had to check out before 10:00 so we collected our things.