Scotland: Day 1

My first (and only planned) day in Scotland Helen and I set out to do some touristy stuff along the Royal Mile. We went to Edinburgh Castle, which is an amazing castle, and is still used as an active military base.
We took a guided tour, which was really fun. The tour guide told us all about the history of the castle, and all the battles and regimes that the castle has seen. Since it is up so high, the views from the castle are really great.
Me and Helen in the "Great Hall", where kings would hold their banquets and meetings.
The basement of one of the castle buildings used to be a prison for holding prisoners of war. The picture above is an American flag carved into one of the original prison doors. It was carved during the American revolution by an American soldier being held there.
We walked down the Royal Mile to the Cathedral, which was really beautiful. When we walked in there was an orchestra rehearsing at the far end. It was so nice to hear the orchestra is such a live space, it sounded so big!
After the cathedral we went on the Scotch Whisky Experience tour near the castle. The first part was like a Disneyland ride, where we rode in a barrel and a projected ghost explained to us how whisky is made. Next, we went to a room where a guide explained the differences between the different regions where scotch is made. Each region had a scent in a bottle for us to smell (general things like vanilla, flowers, smoke, and herbs), and then we got to pick our favorite smell, and from that the guide would give us a scotch that corresponded with that scent.
Then we got to take our scotch into the showroom where they have the largest collection of scotch whisky in the world- around 3,500 bottles! There the guide told us how to try our whisky and what to look for when tasting different single malts.

Grandpa Gordon, there were four bottles of your brand in the collection! I thought you'd get a kick out of this....
The last display case had all the unique bottles in the collection (all bottles are unopened, which is crazy!). My favorite was the chess set in which each piece is a bottle of scotch- the white pieces are English royalty and the black pieces are Scottish royalty. Our guide commented that "you'd need a drink for that game!"

In the evening, we went back to Helens' dorm and had dinner with some people from her floor. We had a great time, and I kept checking my flight status because I had heard that there were some disruptions. By the time I went to bed, there was still no concrete word about whether or not my flight was canceled because of the ash cloud....