You may have noticed that chestnuts seem to be a persistent theme in our writings these days. We seem to be in the chestnut capitol of the world, and this is the peak of the chestnut season. So we decided to take the train down to Edenkoben to check out the annual chestnut and wine festival. The festival was actually a bit out of town up by King Ludwig’s hunting villa, so we caught a shuttle bus up the hill (we were getting tired of climbing hills).

Eating at the Chestnut Festival

The festival was a celebration of all things chestnut. We sampled chestnut liqueur, chestnut brandy, and chestnut bread.  We looked at chestnut pie, chestnut cookies, chestnut muffins, chestnut waffles, chestnut dumplings, and chestnut funnel cake.  For lunch we had chestnut soup and chestnut sausage. Lunch seating was at big long tables, so you sit with other people. The fellow next to us heard our accents and started asking us questions. He assumed we were British because our accents did not sound like the accents he had heard in Texas when he visited the US! We told him a Washington accent is very different from Texas. He also told us more about the food and wine we where having, about the music that was playing, and about the area in general. Very helpful!

Roasted chestnuts- the right way!

After we finished at the festival, we decided to walk back to town (while eating a bag of roasted chestnuts of course) since it would be downhill rather than up. It was a very nice passage through some woods and then past a number of vineyards. The path was also lined with a number of displays of old winemaking equipment such as presses and wagons.

A very pleasant walk

Munching chestnuts

At one point we followed a large group walking into a vineyard. They led us to another path down along the stream flowing towards town. At one point we spotted what looked like a winery just up above the path a little ways, so we went to investigate. It WAS a winery and the gate was open! It was not very busy, but we did see a small group tasting, so we went in and asked if they were still open for tasting.

The winery

The woman said yes and poured us several wines to taste. Eventually we bought three bottles to take back to our flat. Now we need to make sure we get through them before we fly out!
The winery itself was a gorgeous place. The buildings looked ancient, and the tasting was outside in a stone courtyard, with grape vines growing over our heads. Wineries in Napa spend a lot of money trying to recreate that look, and still don’t quite succeed.

Wine tasting in Germany- dictionary at hand

Since the train got us back into Neustadt right about dinner time, we stopped into the wine festival again (it’s hard to stay away). We tried some red new wine (Neuer Wein Rot) since we had only tried the white up until now. It was tasty as well. It actually reminded us of Sangria.

Beautiful evening at the wine festival

Mike was sent on a mission to find food and he did well, coming back with a selection of grilled pork and onions, grilled pork on skewers with sauce, and a spicy pork sausage on a bun. Tami also had a good time taking pictures, especially of several women in a group near us who where standing on their table singing along to the music. Everyone has a great time at the wine festival!

Having fun at the festival

Today we went by train to visit Heidelberg. The old town area was scenic and had a long shopping pedestrian way through it. As we walked along the pedestrian walk, we noticed several women busking. They were each sitting alone against the wall of a shop and singing a haunting song in some language other than German.

Heidelberg

They were also dressed in clothing that, along with the song, made us wonder if they were Turkish. It sounded like each one was singing the same song. By afternoon, when we walked back along the shopping street, they were all gone.

We walked up a very long, steep, switchback path to the old castle overlooking the town, recovered our breath, and walked around the grounds. There were several towers of the castle that had fallen and we were curious if it was due to general castle wear or perhaps some bombing during the war.

Heidelberg Castle

There was a great view of the city from the castle, but the entry fee for going inside the main part of the castle looked a bit steep, given that it only included the courtyard and not the interior of the buildings. To go inside the rooms you had to take an additional guided tour, which cost even more, of course.

View of Heidelberg from the castle

After the castle, we went to the most traditional German lunch we could find. The place we ended up at had musical instruments hanging from the ceiling and incorporated into the lighting. Our table had an old trombone over it, so we took a picture for Keenan. When we walked into the restaurant, Tami spotted a plate being delivered to another table that included spaetzle, mushrooms, and some sort of meat– three of her favorite things to eat. When she located it on the menu, she realized it was quite expensive but had to have it anyway. It had roebuck, spaetzle, mushrooms, and cranberries. It was quite the splurge, but oh yum!

Trombone light fixture

Mike also had to buy some new shoes to replace the ones that were starting to fall apart. We are finding great shoe stores all over the place here in Germany. Mike found a great pair of shoes and we loved the brand name, Bugatti.

A Bugatti!

Now we can say we came home from Europe with a pair of Bugattis!
In the evening we made dinner from spaetzle, cheese and sausage. Then we attempted to roast some of the chestnuts we had collected the day before. We boiled them to soften, as directed by the ladies in the tourist office, then put them in the oven to roast. However, right before we were ready to pull them out, they started exploding! Even after Tami quickly pulled them out of the oven, several more exploded in the kitchen. Quite exciting and quite the mess. At least it was not too hard to clean up as the residue was just dry white flakes and powder. Apparently the one step we missed in the directions was scoring the nuts before cooking. Scoring them would allow the steam to escape, and we think also allow a little water inside to help the skin separate from the shell. We did cut a few open and scoop out the insides, which were delicious. The taste is both nutty and sweet. Fortunately we only cooked half of the nuts we had gathered, so we can try roasting again before we leave.

Our chestnuts and spaetzle

Travel hints for the day: score your chestnuts before roasting and save your 50 cent coins for the public toilets!

On Thursday we decided to walk to a nearby castle, Hambacher Schloss. The route out of town quickly started going up at a rather steep angle (Mike and Tami agreed we would be pushing bikes if we had them), and just kept going up. At one point we got directions to a shortcut from a local. It might have been a shortcut, but it was still steep.

The beautiful path through the woods

FINALLY we got out of town on a trail that leveled off and followed the contours around. That part of the walk was wonderful. The forest was very clean — no underbrush like we would have at home. Also, there were a lot of chestnut trees. Lots and lots of chestnut trees. In fact, there were signs indicating this was a chestnut trail. In places there were chestnuts all over on the ground.

Chestnuts… or Tribbles?

There was also a lot of fuzzy chestnut debris around that looked like hundreds of Tribbles, for any trekkies out there. Every once in a while we could hear chestnuts falling from the trees. They make quite a racket as they plunge to the ground. There were also many birds singing. Simply delightful.

An interactive display, of sorts

After about 2.5 hours we reached the castle. The castle itself was not that much to see. When it was restored, it was also modernized for event use. While we were there the main hall was being set up for a concert. There was a small museum on the history of the castle (it seemed to be tied to the democracy movement in the 1800’s). However, museum visits go quickly when you can’t read the signs.

Hambacher Schloss

We stopped at the castle cafe and had chestnut soup for lunch, which seemed appropriate given the chestnut forest we had tramped through. We were very thirsty from our hike, but the only water we could find was very expensive sparkling water. We each got about three gulps.
The best thing about the castle was the view back over the valley. All the little towns were spread out before us, giving us a much better idea of some of the places we might be going in the next few days. The vineyards were also spread out before us with great variety in color so that it looked like a huge patchwork quilt.

A quilt of vineyards

The walk back went much faster, given that it was going downhill rather than up, and even though we spent a while gathering chestnuts for later roasting. The chestnuts were everywhere on the trail in the woods and we soon had plenty for roasting later. It did start raining partway back so we did have to stop at a weinstube when we got back to town. To dry out, you know!

For once we did not need to wake to an alarm. No flight to catch, no breakfast that we had to make, no train to catch. So we let ourselves sleep in and had a marvelously solid night of sleep. We had a leisurely breakfast of kaese und schinken mit brod (cheese and ham with bread) that we had purchased at the market the night before. Well fortified, we headed out to explore Neustadt. What a delightful town! It is a wonderful blend of old winding streets lined with quaint buildings, block after block. But instead of tourist shops, the beautiful buildings are filled with modern German shops filled with high quality goods. We have seen some nice art and jewelry and lots of great clothing and shoe stores. One day in town and Tami already has a new pair of shoes, and Mike is considering several others. Peggy also got the same style shoes that Tami did, so good thing they wear different sizes. We have seen more pairs of shoes that we like in the shops in one day here than we do in an entire year in the US. Decent prices, too.

Neustadt is so picturesque!

It is quite the transition to go from an English-speaking country to a place where some, but not all, speak English. Most people in the shops and restaurants speak English, but not all. Even those in the tourist center did not all have English. But Peggy knows enough German to get us by and we are picking up key words fairly quickly.
Our biggest issue so far is that we haven’t found anyplace yet that will take any of our credit cards, even our chip card. We seem to be far enough off the beaten path that only a Euro card will work, and we have no idea what that is. So good thing the debit card will work in the cash points. It is very odd, though, to see card readers everywhere and they all say they can’t take our cards. It will be interesting to see if it will different when we take a day trip to Heidelberg.
A little more research indicates that credit cards are not widely accepted in Germany. Mike found one quote that said “a credit card in Germany is as useful as a stone”. Most Germans seems to use a special kind of debit card called an EC (EuroCard). Large hotels and department stores may accept credit cards, and maybe a few other places like train stations and gas stations, but in general, the advice is to get cash from ATM’s and use that for most purchases.

Only in Germany – a Porsche kiddie car

Today we had rain, although it is not cold. We are hoping that it stays a bit dryer for our planned hikes in the forest and down the weinstrasse, but we are well equipped if it doesn’t.
At lunch today we had a delicious lunch of soup (smoked salmon for one, and red lentil with coconut for another) along with flammkuchen, which we had seen on a few menus and finally figured out it is a flatbread with various toppings on it. We had schinken, kaese and Pilsen which is ham, cheese, and mushroom, yum! But even better was the neuer weine, which is the local specialty of the season. It is a “new wine”, so it is just barely fermented. It has a bit of sparkle to it, is cloudy with yeast, a bit sweet, quite light, and utterly delicious. It looks like lemonade and is usually about 4% alcohol. Mike called it “wine beer”.

Neuer weine

In the evening we went to the Neustadt wine festival. There were carnival rides, a band, and lots of booths selling wine and food. Mike was in sausage paradise! We had some more new wine, along with some regular local wine and even tried a bit of sparkling. We were pleased to find that there are a number of dry whites (troken means dry, so it is the word we look for) that are delicious. I always associate German wine with sweet, so this was a good discovery.
An interesting thing we also noticed was that, unlike in the US, they served the food on real plates and the wine in real glasses. When we got our order, we were surprised that the amount they charged us was more than it seemed like it should have been from the prices on the menu. We finally were able to decipher that they were adding in a deposit on the plates and glasses that would get refunded when we brought them back. An interesting system, but it was much nicer than eating on paper plates with plastic cups.
We also tried some roasted chestnuts, something we have always heard about but never actually had. They were tasty and fairly meaty. Apparently we can pick them up in the forest and roast them ourselves. At the tourist center they even told us how to prepare them if we find any hiking. If we get some weather good enough for a hike, we may try that!

Our abode for the week, the apartment on the left

The band was fun. It was a big band full of old geezers our age or so. That meant that they played a lot of music from our generation, like Oya Como Va and Sweet Caroline, along with some German songs and a Big Band song or two. The fun part is that the crowd sings along with the band when they know the song, and quite enthusiastically at that. We also saw groups of young women arm in arm, swaying to the music. and older folks dancing in front of the bandstand. We were sure that the singing probably got even more enthusiastic as the evening wore on. We, however, were worn out and ready to retreat to our apartment on the quiet side of town.

A day of transition between Scotland and Germany, this was a bit grueling as all travel days tend to be. We got up very early and walked to the airport. We were so glad we had discovered the day before just how close our hotel was to the airport. The hotel charged two pounds per person for the shuttle, but we probably walked it faster than it took the shuttle to get there, let alone wait for the shuttle. Our flight took us to London, then change planes for Frankfurt. There was enough clearing over London that we got a decent view of the Thames, Tower of London and Tower Bridge, and the Houses of Parliament as we landed and took off. Hard to be right there in London and not stay for a bit, but we had new places to explore!
Frankfurt is a huge, huge airport. It was interesting that our plane did not even connect directly with the terminal. We were parked in the space between two terminals and exited via the ramps front and back, then onto a bus that took us to some other part of the terminal. Very odd.

Neustadt an der Weinstrasse

Then we had to find our way to the main train station to catch our train to Neustadt. The signs were surprisingly lacking in clarity and it took a bit to figure out that we had to take a shuttle bus to the other terminal to catch the local train that we knew we needed to get to the main train station in Frankfurt. Phew, we finally found the local train and thus got to the main station, but then discovered our train was running behind and would be about 5 minutes late. Okay, a little worrisome, but we had a 16 minute window to make the change of trains in Mannheim to catch the Neustadt train. Then Frau Veth, our landlady for our apartment, was due to pick us up.
By the time the train finally arrived, it was a full 9 minutes late, then it actually pulled out of the station even further behind schedule. And lost more time on the short 40 minute run to Mannheim. No idea what was going on, but despite our mad run to the correct platform when we finally arrived in Mannheim, we had missed the train by a few minutes. So then we had to figure out the next train, but with the aid of a helpful local, we got on the next train, only 25 minutes behind schedule.
As we walked out of the station at Neustadt, the wine festival was in full swing right in front of us. A little reminiscent of a small county fair. But before we had a chance to take a better look, Frau Veth stepped up and was ready with her car to take us to our home for the week.
The place we are staying is wonderful. Since we now have a kitchen, we’ll have to do some cooking this week! We did pop down to a grocery store to pick up a few basic supplies, but we’ll do more grocery shopping later.
We spent a bit of time checking out the town on the way to dinner, but will scope it out more thoroughly tomorrow.

The drive to Edinburgh was fast on the motorway, although we did get some more rain, heavy at times. Mike directed us in to our guest house using his iPad maps that have come in so handy.

Streets of Edinburgh

We ended up driving through downtown Edinburgh at rush hour, but we survived and found the next delightful home for two nights. We have had some truly wonderful housing at guest houses and small hotels. In Edinburgh our home is the Kingsway Hotel, a Rick Steves recommendation, and it is a good find.

Edinburgh Castle

The next morning was our big Edinburgh day, so we hopped a bus up to the Royal Mile and hit the castle first. There are a variety of sections and exhibits, but one particularly interesting spot was in some great hall where there was a demonstration of medieval musical instruments.

Playing the ‘racket’

There was a jolly fellow in period costume working his way through a whole selection of instruments, describing them, playing them, and singing along with the medieval tunes. Very fun!
Shopping in Edinburgh was lots of fun, especially after we found The Woolen Mill, a good quality wool and twede shop. We spent money there. And Don got fitted for a kilt in the ancient tartan of his clan. James, his fitter, was a charming fellow who seemed to make the whole fitting experience a fun event. We all had a good time at the Woolen Mill!

Royal Scots Dragoons museum- modern army battles the bots

After some good serious shopping, it was time to have a farewell dinner with Don, who would be leaving in the morning for a day in London before heading home. We found yet another delicious meal and shared so many of our stories from the trip.
The next morning it was raining, so we decided against doing more shopping in town and instead headed out to visit Stirling castle, in, of course, the town of Stirling.

Stirling Castle

Stirling Castle was the seat of the Scottish monarchy for hundreds of years. There was a whole series of King James’s who ruled from Stirling, and Mary Queen of Scots moved into the castle at one point and had her son live in the castle since it was deemed safer when he was younger. Most of the kings did their own renovations and redecorating. In particular, James V and James VI each made extravagant changes including a lavish palace and a grand hall.

Recreations of the Stirling Heads

There is a famous series of carved heads that were part of the ceiling in one hall. At one point the ceiling started to fall from the weight of all the carvings, so it was removed and all the heads were dispersed and given as gifts around the country, Eventually, the wife of one lord decided to track down the heads and bring them back to the castle. She tracked down all but two out of probably 50 or so. They had a great display of all the recovered heads. Long story short, there’s a ton of important Scottish history involved in Stirling Castle!
After the Scottish monarchy quit using the castle as their homebase, it became a military castle and most of the buildings were pretty much gutted. It wasn’t until the 1960’s that people thought they ought to restore the castle and booted the troops out. It was quite an interesting place.

Earliest known ‘football’ found at Stirling Castle

We finally hit the motorway so we could return the car to the airport. We were staying at the Travelodge so we dropped the bags off first, then topped off the gas tank and drove to the rental place. Our plan had been to then take the shuttle back to the hotel from the rental place at the airport. As we drove from the hotel to the rental place, we realized that we were just practically across the street from the hotel! So no shuttle needed, and we knew we could easily walk to the airport in the morning instead of paying 2 pounds per person for a shuttle to take us such a short distance.
The rooms at the Travelodge were just fine, but the ‘restaurant’ at the Travelodge was grim and totally unappealing so we went across the street to the Ramada for a decent dinner. Then to bed early for our morning flight to Germany.
In 8 days we traveled just under 600 miles on the left side of the road, tasted over 40 single malt whiskies, and ate many, many great meals. It was hard to say goodbye to Scotland, but more adventures await!

One of many whisky tastings

We started out the day taking a walk down by the river. It was a drizzly day but we had our handy dandy raincoats with us and stayed dry. That was our one real purchase before the trip. Knowing that we would be in Scotland in October we figured we’d better have good rain gear. We finally had a chance to use them! Who knew it would be so nice and sunny in Scotland!

Our hotel in Pitlochry

We got semi-lost on our walk a few times, but eventually made it back into town. At one point we needed to cross a dam to get back to the town side of the river. We ran into a couple coming the other way who told us that the route was closed. After some discussion, we proceeded anyway since WE didn’t see any signs and found the path across the river unobstructed. We kept expecting to find it blocked at some point, but never did. The other couple must have been confused. We did see them in town later, though, so they found a way across the river somewhere.

View from the dam

There were a couple last distilleries in town that we wanted to try. First we stopped in at Blair Athol which was just a few hundred feet down the road from our hotel. (How did Blair Athol get its name? It was named after a guy named Blair but he was a complete athol.) We were not impressed. The distillery seemed to focus mostly on blended scotches and only had one malt, and to taste that one malt you still had to go on a tour. We declined the tour and left.
Next we drove up a winding back road to the Edradour distillery. There we fell in love. Edradour advertises itself as the smallest distillery in Scotland, and that seemed to be true. The main whisky making building had one mash tun, one first run still and one second run still, and they told us that still was the smallest size allowed. If the still was any smaller it could be hidden away from the tax man, and we can’t have that!

Edradour Distillery

Walking through the building and seeing the process start to finish again was very interesting on such a small scale. We also saw the store of casks aging in the warehouse. One cask had the date of 1974 on it and had an estimated value of 250,000 pounds for just that one cask. We wondered when that would finally get bottled.
The other delightful thing about Edradour was the tasting room that was open to tour-takers. You can pretty much taste anything they make and the price for a dram was much lower than any pub we had been in. So we sampled quite a few (except for Tami, the driver) and fell in love with many of their whiskies.

The spirit safe

The distillery was purchased by the current owner in 2002. Since he purchased it, they seem to have been vigorously experimenting with casks. There are some that are done in just bourbon casks, some that are done in bourbon and then finished in a variety of wine and sherry casks, and some that do their whole time in various types of wine casks. That is very unusual, but it gives them a lot of interesting options to sell even though they don’t have much that is older than about 10-12 years. The hard part was making a decision about which one to buy and take home. A decision was made and we trundled on down the road to Edinburgh.

Spent grain is fed to the cattle – happy cows!

After the windy and rainy night, we wondered what weather we would find in the morning. It was certainly grey, but there was not much rain, and no rain at all by the time we finished our Full Scottish Breakfast. We once again loaded the car and headed down the road.
First stop, Culloden Battlefield. Culloden is where the Jacobite army, led by Bonnie Prince Charlie, faced the Government troops led by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, in 1746. The Jacobites (Latin for James) sought to return the Stuart line to the throne. It was the final confrontation between the two sides and resulted in a complete rout of the Jacobite troops.

Don trying out the weapons

The site had a very well presented museum alongside the field where the battle actually took place. In the museum, there were presenters in period costume, realistic reproductions of period weapons that you could try out, and a large visual display that showed the detailed movements of all the troops throughout the battle. It seemed to show the troops down to the man, and it was possible to see how each battalion moved and reacted throughout the battle. Fascinating. There were more displays that showed the whole background to the conflict and events leading up the the battle. We then walked out to the battlefield area and it was so much easier to imagine what actually happened.

Our next stop was Cawdor Castle, which is a 17th century castle that was built around a 15th century tower house. It is still inhabited by the Dowager Countess, but she lives in a nearby cottage during the summer while the house is open for public viewing. We were there just days before it was due to be closed for the season. The Countess, however, apparently hangs out around the grounds pretty much all day every day.

Cawdor Castle

She had just been through the castle a half hour before we went through and was still around somewhere because her car was parked out front. One of the guides was quite chatty and told us quite a bit about the family. The Countess sounds like a character!
At this point we came to the unfortunate conclusion that we were not going to have time to make it to the Speyside distilleries. That was a sad decision, but there is just so much to see and do in Scotland. Clearly we should have scheduled weeks, not days!
We therefore took a shortcut down to Grantown on Spey, where we had lunch and shopped in a “country wear” store. There were lots of wonderful Scottish hunting jackets, etc., at quite steep prices. We did not splurge. Tami enjoyed seeing a fellow with his dog. They both went into the local butcher shop, and when they came out the little dog had a large fresh bone, wrapped in plastic, in his mouth ready to take home.

A dog and his bone

After lunch we headed back out and drove through some of the Scottish Highlands. This is the kind of countryside you so often see in pictures — rounded hills covered in heather (many other areas we had been in were heavily forested). Tami would have liked to stop and go for a hike, but we just did not have time. We wanted to get to Pitlochry in time to find a place to stay.
We were lucky we got to Pitlochry when we did — the town was almost all booked. The nice people at the tourist office did manage to find a couple rooms for us, however. The Fasganeoin Hotel turned out to be a wonderful place. No, we can’t pronounce it either. It was truly a great find. It was built by a local wealthy business man who spent much of his time in Japan but built this house in Pitlochry to entertain his friends in the summer. It was a gorgeous old house with many bedrooms for all those friends. It was of the era to have bell ringers in all the rooms for summoning help. It was decorated in period decor but was quite comfortable and the grounds were beautiful.
After settling into our rooms and greeting the local cat who was stretched in front of the fire, we headed back into Pitlochry to find dinner. Pitlochry is very picturesque with a winding main street lined with shops, restaurants and bars. They have a local theater that puts on shows all summer and their current offering was some sort of light and sound festival in the forest that seemed to be quite a big deal. That explained the lack of rooms! There were lines of buses along the street of this little town, filled with theater-goers. We were happy not to be getting on a bus. We found a delicious dinner, ate too much, and stumbled back down to our hill at the end of the street. After a nice stop in the lounge to relax and chat, we headed to our beautiful rooms for a nice quiet night. On to Edinburgh tomorrow!

Pitlochry main street

Kilmartin Hotel is situated across the street from the local church and churchyard, which is also next to the a museum dedicated to the archaeological sites that surround the area. There are over 800 sites, including cairns, standing stones, and pictographs within 6 miles of Kilmartin. Tami was in heaven.

Kilmartin churchyard

Starting with the local churchyard, there were many headstones of varying ages, including terraces of them going down the hillside. Within the churchyard there was also a display of stone slabs that dated from the 1200’s through the 1700’s. At the museum, there were great explanatory displays of life during the stone through bronze ages when the standing stones and cairns were presumably built.

Medieval stone slabs

Standing stones

After yet another Full Scottish Breakfast, we grabbed our cameras and headed out to explore the churchyard in full daylight, a brief stop at the excellent museum to learn some background, and then off to find the standing stones. They were just a mile down the road and down a short path into a sometimes sheep field. Sheep patties everywhere, but there were the stones standing in the sunshine. (Yes, it was once again a sunny day.) The first set of five stones are arrayed in a rough, elongated X formation, the significance of which it seems archaeologists are still debating. We just thought they were cool. We then walked over to the next area which was a circle of stones.

Stone circle

These were more the size and shape of extra-large headstones and then later had a cairn type layer of stones place around them. Good stuff.
On we went down the road, heading for Oban. Oban seemed like a very cute town on a beautiful harbor. We stopped just long enough for Don to buy a bottle of Oban whisky to remember his former dog Oban with, and to look around in a woolens and kilt shop.
Back on the road, we suddenly noticed a very picturesque castle out on a small island. We stopped to check it out and get some pictures. It turned out it is called Stalker Castle. There was a great viewpoint, complete with a lunch cafe, so we got lunch after taking our pictures. We have been very pleasantly surprised with the quality of the food in Scotland so far. Not what you expect in Great Britain. More on that later.

Stalker Castle

As we continued our long day of driving, we drove the length of Loch Ness. We looked and looked, but no sightings of Nessie. Just past Loch Ness we entered Inverness. We just missed the 5:00 closing of the tourist center, so Don and Mike were sent out on foot to hunt down a place to stay. Fortunately within a few minutes they stumbled up a street lined with them. Knocking on doors they quickly located one with two rooms available, and knowing they would be asked, even remembered to look at the rooms before booking them. Tami and Peggy were quite happy at the return of the successful hunters.
A brief walk over to Inverness Castle (which seems to be taken over by municipal offices) under some foreboding skies was followed by another pub dinner, and then we all went back and crashed, listening to some wild winds as the storm blew through the area.

Clouds at sunset hint at the impending storm

We have to say again what a nice place the Bowmore House was. Breakfast was salmon and eggs, and after we finished eating, Andrew, the innkeeper, offered us a wee dram! We did not turn it down. We’ve never been served whisky with our breakfast before. Somehow it seemed just right. After we ate, Andrew gave us some pointers for the day.

Mike going for a wee dram

Since we were in Bowmore, it made sense to visit Bowmore Distillery (Bowmore Darkest is on Mike’s favorites list). Our rule here, since we can’t bring very much back, is to not buy anything we think we can find at home. At Bowmore they had a special offer – fill your own bottle directly from a cask. Mike knew THAT would give him something he wouldn’t be able to find in Seattle! We got taken down into one of the cask warehouses where they had a 15 year old hogshead set aside. Mike got to draw out the whiskey with an old fashioned copper siphon, put it in the bottle, and paste on the label. The rest of us were snapping pictures of every step. Mike seemed to be in his own special heaven. That will be a special treat when we get home.

New hats!

We also stopped at the Islay woolen mill down the road. They weave their own wool cloth there with hundred year old machines. As we approached the building we could hear the load clatter of the looms in operation and we were able to get a tour of the building. Much of the machinery dates from the early 1900’s. They sell some items made from their cloth, so all four of us had to buy flat caps made from Islay wool cloth. Tami got one in the Islay tartan pattern, and Mike got one in the Bowmore distillery pattern.
We stopped for one more distillery visit on the way to the ferry. Caol Ila is a less well known Islay distillery. As we walked up to the distillery we enjoyed one of the special parts of visiting the distilleries that we unfortunately can’t adequately share with readers. That is the wonderful smell as you approach the distillery. It envelopes you in a wonderful cloud of whisky essence. You breathe deep and know that you’re in a special place! At Caol Ila, we all agreed that our favorite was a distiller’s special that was finished in muscato barrels. They had another special festival bottling, but we thought it was overly medicinal.

afternoon’s entertainment

We arrived at the ferry terminal a bit early so wandered around a bit, took lots more pictures, and then found a picnic table to sit at (it was actually sunny today). While sitting there, a group of 5 guys who had been distillery touring together walked by with their farewell beers and all five climbed on a nearby cannon for a group picture. Tami started snapping pictures of them as they one-by-one crammed themselves onto the cannon. They spotted that they were being observed so they came down and asked us where we were from. When we said we were from Seattle they said they had to sing for us. Not sure of the connection there, but they serenaded us with a very special (and off key) rendition of “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling”. One of them then did his comedy routine for us, though he had to be reminded of some of the lines by his friends. Many times, many lines. They were quite amusing and obviously had been having a great time. For quite a while, we would say.

Westies supervising the visitors

As we waited for the ferry we also noticed some sweet West Highland Terriers who obviously lived at the pub next to the ferry dock. They sat next to each other on a little rise observing everything and everyone who happened by. They were far too photogenic to ignore, so here are Bonnie and Rory.
The approaching ferry ended the comedy routine of our new friends and we were soon back on a ferry. This ferry was far different from the previous ferry. The interior was quite fancy, almost like a cruise ship. The first ferry was quite minimalist and functional. As we pulled away from the dock we had some great views of both Islay and Jura in the warm sunshine. Not a bad way to spend the day.

After we exited the ferry, we just had a short 40 minute drive up to Kilmartin where we had booked rooms.  As we approached the final turn into town, we knew it was going to be a special place when we saw the old church with rows of terraced gravesites advancing down the hill.  There are a also a number of standing stones and other archeological sites (800 within a 6 mile radius) in the area.  Tami is in heaven.  We had a few minutes to poke around the church yard before losing our light.  A number of interesting older grave stones and stone grave covers had been set aside in special enclosures, going back into the 1200’s.