We had to switch hotels on our third day in Edinburgh, so while we were able to sleep in more than we had the day of our Loch Ness trip, we didn’t really get to sleep in that much. We threw all of our stuff together from one place and stored our stuff with the next place. Surprisingly, the whole process was mostly painless.

I had set us up on a walking tour in the afternoon, so we had the rest of the morning to kill from there. We hopped around between potential brunch spots before we ended up near the university and at this diner-style restaurant near the university called Mums. The food was good, but the most important part was the quality time I got to spend with my family.

Between the hunt for a restaurant and the food itself, we didn’t actually have much time before our tour started, so we went to the meeting place and started the tour. On the tour, we walked around the old town and learned more about the city. One important thing we learned was that we were quite literally down the street from the Edinburgh Castle, which we had not yet visited at that time. Surprisingly, there was not too much overlap between the tours even if we did learn the origin of the term “shit-faced” for the third time in just over twenty-four hours. The tour was good, but had we done it again, probably would have had us do the castle for the first part of the day. We didn’t actually have time to go into the castle and probably should have. Oh well.

The tour ended right around the time when we could check into hotel number two, so we spent quite some time doing that before somehow managing to drag everyone back out. Umma and Mia went to do some shopping, so Chris and I ran into St. Giles Cathedral, which we had learned earlier in the day is not actually a cathedral despite the name. The church was pretty, especially the Thistle Chapel where you can see an angel playing a bagpipe. For future reference, you have to get a permit to take photos inside the cathedral. I didn’t know that, but we didn’t get in trouble because the place was about to close. I ended up donating some money because I felt guilty, though.

We met up with everyone back outside and finally made our way up to Edinburgh Castle. Almost. We found out along the way that the Scotch Whiskey Experience was still open despite the fact that we had been told earlier in the day that it closed at 2 pm. We ran inside to see if we could get tickets and then with the twenty minute wait finally made it up to Edinburgh Castle. It was dark and we just bought tickets for a whiskey experience, so clearly had no expectation that it was open and we’d be able to get inside, but it’s still a pretty epic castle.

(By the way, those last two photos were taken within like ten minutes of each other.)

We then lined up for the Scotch Whisky Experience. Now, I’m not sure what we expected from this experience. We knew some level of whisky tasting would be involved and this was certainly something on my Edinburgh bucket list, but weren’t really sure what the rest of the “experience” would be. It was actually quite fun. You start off in a ride of all things, where a ghost walks you through the process of making whisky (a spirit teaching you about spirits, get it?). It was cute, but our tour guide earlier in the day hyped many more puns than we got. Either that or the puns were way above our head.

After the ride, they bring you to a video where they walk you through the different scotch regions of Scotland. They use a scratch and sniff card to walk you guide you through the flavor profiles that you can expect from each of those regions. From there, you get a history of blended malts before you get to choose the whisky you want to taste.

With five of us, you would have thought that we would have each gotten a different one, our group doubled up on Speyside and no one tried the Lowland or blend. I got Campbeltown, but Mia’s Highland was the best of the bunch, IMO. You get to try your whisky in a room with an enormous whisky collection (I think the biggest scotch whisky collection or something?). It was a bit much, but also pretty and kind of awesome. The tour ends after that point. You can buy more whisky and obviously end in a gift shop. The bonus is you get to keep the cup.

After that, we ran around looking for a place to eat before ending up at a pub. I got some fish and chips and pretended that I tried to use my newly minted scotch whisky knowledge to order some whisky. On the upside, I was able to order the drink that time around. On our first night, I was almost not served alcohol because I could not find ID to prove my age (#humblebrag?). Chris also tried to help an Italian couple order their food. We still aren’t sure if he actually succeeded. After dinner, we called it a night because we had an early wake up call for flights home the next morning.

Other things I missed about our trip to Edinburgh:

• We did see the Elephant House (which is famously the cafe that JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter). We actually almost ate dinner there one night, but the menu didn’t look that exciting.
• If it wasn’t forty pounds, I absolutely would have bought one of the many Harris Tweed dog coats that we saw at the stores around town. Also, they had dog kilts, which killed me.
• The embarrassing Lost fan in me kept calling the philosopher Desmond and not David Hume.
• We had a relatively short layover in London Heathrow on the way back to Basel. Despite the fact that we did not have much time there, we somehow managed to fit in lunch at Wagamama because James is strangely obsessed with that place.

So, I’ve said this a million times, but I really liked Edinburgh. The town was beautiful, full of some great stories, and just all around fun.