Things that go bump in the night....

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...and no, it's not Sam and I stumbling into furniture after too much whiskey ;o)

Day 3 in Edinburgh - we've had a blast here! We are excited to be moving on toward St Andrews tomorrow, although a bit nervous about picking-up our rental car and learning how to drive on the opposite side of the road.

Today was a great day - but very busy. We started out by visiting the Britannia, the former yacht to the Queen until it was decommissioned in 1997. Highlights of the yacht include the state dining room, the Queen's bedroom, and the Queen's office. We spent about two hours exploring the yacht, and enjoyed lunch at the tea shop on board. Very exciting - how often do you have the opportunity to explore a former royal residence and see the Queen's bedroom?

From there, we had to walk fairly quickly back to Edinburgh for our 4 pm tour time at the Scotch Whiskey Experience. The first part of the experience is a barrel ride tour through the whiskey distillation process. From there, a guide met us and we learned about the different whiskey regions of Scotland. The experience was clever - as the guide was discussing the different regions, we had a scratch and sniff card that allowed us to get some of the different notes/scents of the whiskey from that region. At the end of the talk, we were able to choose which whiskey to try based on which scent we liked from the scratch and sniff card. We also learned how to drink/taste/enjoy our whiskey. We splurged on the "Gold" ticket - which allowed us to try 4 other whiskies (one from each region discussed on the tour). I really enjoyed the lowlands, highlands and speyside whiskies - not a huge fan of Islay whiskies, as they are super smoky.

Finally we ended the night with a ghost walk (ek!). I have a love/hate relationship with ghost walks. I love them, but then they freak me out so badly I can't sleep - so now I'm trying to figure out every noise/bump I hear in our room. Hoping Sam will let me leave the light on! Anyways - the Mercat Tour was fantastic and our guide was amazing! We did some walking above ground near the Royal Mile/High Street, then went to the Blair Street Vaults (aka one of the most haunted places in the UK!). Fortunately, we missed all the ghosts - but definitely a creepy place. One of the best things about Scotland this time of year is that the sun was still up at 10 pm when our tour ended - so at least we had light as we walked home.

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