Started off the day eating a free breakfast at our hotel (Aberlour hotel), which seems like a traditional Scottish breakfast (including black pudding, which is basically blood sausage paddy).

After, we headed 20 minutes to Glenlivet estate / Distillery. A few things I learned:

-it has a really long drive way up a hill so that the taxman (from the olden days) wouldn’t find their whisky they were trying to sell

-it’s 200 years since they got their license to sell whisky

-it’s fruity flavors are mainly from the copper stills (not the well water)

-in the stills it is 4 hours in the washbacks and 5 hours in the copper ones (where it then is at the 62% alcohol level they want it at)

-they use both american casks and European casks. European casks are supposed to be sweeter notes while the american smoother notes

-the 12 and 16 single malt years are double casks, where they are from two different barrels (american and the. European). The 14 is only from american (but could still be double cask

-single malt refers to the fact the whisky comes from one distillery

-single cask means the bottles whisky it has only been from one barrel. Double cask means the bottle has whisky from two different barrels. A Finish means it was transferred from cask to another (say from and American one to a European one)

-Glenlivet was Seagram before

After Glenlivet, we headed west towards Inverness to Clansman Hotel to catch our boat ride around Loch Ness (by jacobite boats). The boat ride was 2 hours in total and included a stop to Urquhart castle (the highlands largest castle). Some details about it:

-built in the 500s, and was around until the 1500s

-eventually people broke through it (or stormed it) and also pillages things from it like it’s rooftops and art

In terms of the Loch Ness monster, apparently some doctor in the early 1900s took a picture of Nessi, but they discover in the 1990s it was a fake picture (he used a combination of picture taking trickery). However people do claim still that they have seen it for real.

After we headed to a trail close by called the South Loch Ness trail. Only hiked 2 km of it because it was too muddy from the rain early (Scotland weather has a bit of on and off showers). The hike did have a good view of the highlands.

After, we headed to Inverness to walk around along the Ness Walk. Inverness on Sundays have most of their shops closed, but most of their eateries are open (and the really good ones are full). It took us our 3rd choice restaurant selection (but they seated us an hour later than we wanted). We did stop McDonalds and Tesco (a grocery store). Details can be found here for the restaurant we ate at, Encore Une Fois:

http://food.johnmatienzo.com/2024/07/07/encore-une-fois/

We then headed back to our hotel in Aberlour.