One of those days

Thursday, October 30

Sometimes on vacation I just have one of those days when it’s happening I just know it’s going to go down as epic, a day I will want to relive again.  Today was one of those days.  And I’m mentally noting to myself how lucky I am that it happened.

I slept reasonably well, although I did wake up to Safari Live a few times, which I was on when I fell asleep each time.  I felt human again when I woke up (although my Garmin was telling me I still needed to recover from my stressful day yesterday…always an excuse with that thing!)

I was up and showered and headed down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, which was included with my room rate.  I had smoked salmon (amazing!) with scrambled eggs and sourdough toast (with orange marmalade, is there really anything better?). I also wanted more protein to help me get through the big walking day ahead of me, so I also had greek yogurt with berry compote and a couple pieces of fresh pineapple.

The morning was sunny with blue sky and no rain to be seen, so I wanted to do most of my photography and walking around today.  I did that and then some!

I grabbed a cappuccino at the coffee shop next door and headed to the Ross Fountain which is in Prince’s Street garden and right underneath the castle.  I have photos from there on my last couple of trips and was hoping for some nice foliage there, which I think I got.

I then made my way about 15 minutes further along to Dean Village, which is a hamlet within Edinburgh which used to be a milling village (~800 years or so).  It’s been redeveloped and now is a quaint, but tourist overrun village.  It is really pretty and quaint but I feel bad for the residents who have all of us traipsing around their neighborhood.  I was there early enough that it wasn’t too thick with tourists but it was getting there when I was leaving.  

My next stop was back closer to my hotel, Greyfriar’s church yard.  It’s a small cemetery and church within the eyeline of the castle.  Apparently the author of the Harry Potter books came up with some of her character names by walking through this cemetery and reading the names on the stones.  That means a lot of fans are here trying to find them all.  But again, I think the timing of my visit and that this isn’t the most popular time of year to be here cut down on the worst of the crowds.

As it was approaching noon, I started walking down the Royal Mile towards Edinburgh Gin Distillery where I had my gin making experience scheduled.  I grabbed another vegan sausage roll despite not being super hungry only because I wanted something in my stomach before I drank gin all afternoon.  I also stopped along the way and bought my sister and myself each a cashmere scarf in a typical tartan pattern.  I’d not been able to find my maternal grandmother’s tartan but I think that may be because her family was from Glasgow, not Edinburgh.  So I chose different tartans for us.

And finally my long awaited gin experience.  This was just so amazing and I learned a lot.  It was run by two guys who work for the distillery.  Basically we spent the first 45 minutes or so reviewing dozens of botanicals, most in plant form but some in liquid too.  The guys helped us choose what might pair best together and also made sure we were making a balanced gin.  They had made the base alcohol spirit with the juniper and other base botanicals overnight, we were just choosing and adding the flavors that would make it shine.  In the end, I chose bitter orange, basil, cassia bark (smelled like cinnamon) and lapsang which is like a smoky pepper.  Once we helped set up our still, we went off for a tour of the distillery.

All of the products are made here in one of three stills.  The largest can turn out 2500 bottles a day.  They create about 300,000 total  annually, of all flavors and including their non-gin liqueurs.  It was pretty impressive.

We went back to the gin lab and did a tasting of 5 of their gins (Classic, Seaside, Cannonball (navy strength), Old Tom and Strawberry Pink Peppercorn).  They were all pretty good but I think I liked the Cannonball the best.  I was surprised to see that they still have my favorite Fever Tree tonic here, which has been discontinued at home.  The guys gave me a good idea though, they said I could make my own tonic with a soda stream or something similar.  That’s something to consider!!

Once our gins were ready, they cut them with water to fall well below the 90% ABV that they were.  They had a tool to measure the alcohol in the gin which let them know how much water needed to be added to get it closer to 45%.  Then we capped and sealed the bottles with wax.  But not before we got to try our gins, and mine was pretty good.  Granted I was pretty gin weary at that point, but I liked how it tasted at least in the sample!  We also got small tastes of what the gins tasted like at each phase of the nearly hour long distillation.  Eye watering strong and varied strength of botanicals as the process continued. Very interesting.

Too soon the gin experience was over and I was still standing!  It was a lot of fun with a fun group of like minded gin aficionados.

I headed back to the hotel, dropped my stuff off and quickly ate an impossible burger and fries at the hotel restaurant again because I’d purchased a ticket to see Depeche Mode M movie down the street.  It will only be played worldwide this week and I’ll miss it at home.  It was a nice treat and of course a great movie, I’m glad I went.

As I walked back to my hotel I reveled in the thought of a dry, sunny day here filled with many of my favorite things, photography, gin, music, retail therapy, walking and being outdoors.  I don’t think I could ask for anything more.  Tomorrow I’ll try to fit in a museum or two maybe!