Travel day today – we’re on the road for just about 3 hours (125 miles), going from Glencoe to Portree (Isle of Skye). A lot of it was highway driving, A82 – A87.
Back around Glencoe Valley, we were exploring a few different spots. Liz had a place in mind, and was trying to track it down.
We eventually found it: the Meeting of Three Waters. There wasn’t a ton of easy parking, but we found some spots, hopped a small fence, and hiked our way up to several small pools/rivers.
We’d stopped here briefly, during our last visit to Scotland. But the weather was rough, and we didn’t walk all that far.
This time though – we were heading further, with more to traverse (some bridges, as well as a rock scramble).
En route to Glencoe, stopping off at the Falls of Falloch.
Our hotel this time around was in downtown Glasgow, at Native. I dropped off Liz and our luggage, and left her to check in while I parked the car in a nearby garage.
On arriving, I learned that we had been upgraded – and were now in one of the suites on the top floor.
It’s the big travel day! We have a late night flight that leaves O’Hare, so we both ended up working a full day. But then got the house all packed up, got the water line shut off, the lights on timers, and reset the AC for vacation mode.
As is tradition, we paused for a small dram to kick off the departure.
I think I’ve told this story a few times by now: my initial understanding of a “Driver’s Dram” was completely incorrect – and idiotic. When going to distilleries and attending tastings, for those participants who are drivers… the distilleries bottle up their whisky into take-away bottles, named “Driver’s drams.”
It didn’t quite click in my brain that this process was designed for the driver to consume them later, after everyone had gotten home and… you know… no longer driving.
To me, a “Driver’s Dram” meant that anyone who was a driver would just get smaller portions during the tasting. Because… they were driving.
While I’ve had so-so success with text prompts adding things to images, I’ve found it pretty amazing when I just leave the prompt blank. And what Firefly does is more or less try to fill in the blanks (fun thread on expanding album covers).
Interesting tidbit 1: I think a while ago, Liz got to meet Joe for the first time at this very restaurant. And it’s also where she got to taste different scotch whiskies that were outside of the peaty/smoky realm. And I daresay that’s when she got the spark to start exploring scotch whisky a lot more, and started going down her sherry bomb phase.
It was a fun thing to revisit, stepping through our vacation and all the various places we went. We used a mixture of receipts, notes, blog posts, and regular old memory to try to revisit the whisky we’ve tried, the ones we’ve forgotten, and the ones that still stand out to this day.
The place I was talking to was The Strong Water Company. I decided to just buy the bottle (since it was their last), and we’d figure out the shipping somehow. And that’s when I heard some magical words: “My friend is actually flying in to Chicago tomorrow.”
A lot of logistics for us today. We fly out of Glasgow, so this meant driving the hour from Edinburgh to Glasglow, stopping to add petrol to the car, before then dropping it off at the airport.
Our last day in Edinburgh (and Scotland), Liz and I decided to just wander around a bit.
We learned a bit more about the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, and both Liz and I were quite floored by the selections that our server, Francesco, pulled for us.
We had several drams here, and each and every single one was absolutely delicious. I think right here and now is where I started to really lean towards cask strength Speyside whiskies, very bright and fruit forward.
We arrived a little harried (and of course were the last to sit down). But everyone else was hanging out, having drinks, and getting ready for the evening. We were lucky the first 30 minutes were open like this, as we were so incredibly, terribly, late. But it all ended up working out.