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Scotland: Day 4
So it’s been how long since my last update…? Sorry about leaving folks hanging on day 3. It was a really long day, so you have to understand that I was just trying to give you a feel for what it must have felt like for me on that bike trail 
On to day 4 – This was a busy day. It started with a freaky deaky dream I had about a little girl who needed medical help and ended up dying while doctors focused their efforts on someone else. It was really sad and disturbing, but thankfully, was also only a dream. We didn’t sleep in too much that day since there was a lot on our to-do list for the day. We decided that a distillery tour was a must for this trip, so we made our way towards Perth in search of one. We first stopped at a cool looking place called Deanston Distillery; they didn’t have tours, so we moved on. They were able to recommend another distillery to us before we left though, so that was incredibly nice of them. We headed to Blackford to Tullibardine Whiskey Distillery and made a tour appointment for 3 PM. Since it was still something like 10 or 11 AM, we had a lot of time to kill before the tour and ended up wandering the rest of the strip mall where the distillery was located. There was a Baxter’s Soup shop we wandered into that had some really tasty looking goodies. Baxter’s is like the equivalent of Campbell’s soup for us, I think. They had tons of stuff there, ranging from whiskey to soups to jams. They also had a gift section with lotions, candles, books, etc. There was a mini market section with refrigerated goods as well. The place was huge.
Tullibardine – We toured this one.
Once we got bored of the strip mall, Keith drove us all through Perth to find something interesting to check out. Nothing stood out in Perth, so we kept going until we hit Scone. We pulled into the obscure parking lot of Scone Palace and decided to walk around. The place was pretty empty as it seems we hit it during an off-season, so they didn’t have any tours going. That meant we were pretty much on our own, so we wandered around for a bit. We saw peacocks, an old coronation site, a very old graveyard, giant trees, and a cool outdoor maze called Murray Star Maze. Not too shabby for being on our own.
One of the oldest gravestones there
Murray star maze
Peacock – reminds me of Titania in her bower
We finally took our tour of Tullibardine and had to opportunity to sample whiskies. I passed on the sampling, but Keith, Stefania, and Christian tried a few sips. It was a neat tour, though. I bought my dad a bottle of whiskey as a souvenir and some Tullibardine chocolates for my co-workers.
Tullibardine
Old whiskey barrels
1488 - King James passed through to pick up some whiskey
Whiskey tasting
After Tullibardine, we headed to Stirling and hate a super-late lunch at The River House restaurant before dricing up the hill to the castle. The late lunch deal was faaaaaabulous. I had angus steak and french fries – so tasty and super-duper affordable (7 pounds or something). We didn’t expect it to be great or anything because of the price, but were so pleased that the food and service was so good (it looked like a pretty hoity toity restaurant).
Tasty dinner
View of Stirling castle from The River House restaurant
When we got to Stirling castle, we walked around town I took a bunch of pictures. Stirling castle was closed because it was off-season, but the view was still cool.
Loch Lomond was next on Keith’s list of to-sees, so we headed there. We were racing the sunset and got there just as the sun was going down. The view was beautiful. The sky was colored with pinks and oranges galore and there were no power lines in sight. Beautiful.
After the sun went down, we headed back to the cabins and watched lots of TV to unwind (it was a really eventful day!) We made salmon and pasta for dinner and watched hours and hours of “Scrubs” and “Supernatural.” At one point, we heard some noise on our balcony, so we paused to see what was out there – lo and behold – it was the pine marten again! It made two appearances that night while we watched TV.
We went to bed early that night since our plan was to get up early the next day to travel to Loch Ness (3.5-hour drive) and head home afterward.
