Tatoo?

Monday 29 December 2008 Edinburgh - Kilmarnock, Scotland
Well, as nice a backpackers as it was we both had a terrible nights sleep. I ended up with crazy English woman coming back late, a bit under the weather, then had a chainsaw of a snore cranking out above me for the rest of the night. In Pete's room he had one of his room mates come back at 3am, then another get up at 4.30 to get ready to go to work. Best of intentions, but you can't control the outcome. Wearily we headed up the hill toward the Castle stopping at a few of the little shops along the way. Peru was home to Alpaca and it is clear that Scotland is home to Cashmere. Its sold everywhere, along with your family tartan in everything you can think of from socks, to teatowels, scarfs, and of course kilts. We were so close to the Castle, when we found a place called the 'The Scottish Whisky Tasting Experience'. Should we stop? Well, is the Pope Catholic? Having done a few Whiskey and Whisky tastings before it was interesting to have this new experience. This was an 'unbiased' view of whisky making and Chris White who was our very Scottish wee guide was brilliant in his explanations. But the best was yet to come. A couple of free tastings, of course, some free glasses, unexpected, and finish at the bar. This bar is like nothing you will see anywhere. Over 100 whisky's on the menu, all with prices for a wee dram. We then put Chris to the test telling him of our likes and dislikes of flavors in Whisky and he then gave us a couple to smell so we could select one. I ended up with a 12yr Glenlivit that was cask strength. Cask strength means that it hasn't been watered down to reduce the alcohol. This is a light, soft, citrus single malt which I fell in love with. It only come out 3 months ago and wasn't on the menu, so have a go if you can find it. They also had a nice cafe and we had really yummy soup for lunch before heading off to finally get to the castle.

The first thing I noticed about the castle was the parade ground. Having played in a marching brass band and pipe band, and having watched many an Edinburgh Tattoo, I was amazed to see the angle of the parade ground is really quite steep. We stood walking up to toward the entrance wondering what it might be like as a musician on a cold Scottish night playing in the Royal Military Tattoo, galloping up and down this magnificent setting. The next thing I noticed was the que to get in. This was enormous, and was our own fault for not being able to resist the Whisky Experience and now being lunch time, most people had crawled out to see the sun and were ready to do some sightseeing. So unfortunately we didn't go in to the castle otherwise we were probably not going to make it out of Edinburgh today, but we did have a look around and the bits that we did see just looked incredible. Certainly something we would love to come back to.

As time was getting on we headed for Kilmarnock, just south of Glasgow, birth place of Pete's mum and home until she was in her teens. The town seems smallish, but feels like it could have been industrial at some stage. We had a bit of a look around, stopped for dinner at a Nepalese Restaurant and then headed to Maccas to use their free wi-fi to book some accommodation online for the next couple of days in London so we have somewhere to shower and park etc. The www.visitlondon.com site is great, but unfortunately the accommodation bookings system didn't work and did our heads in as we finally found what we wanted but then couldn't book anything. Then the laptop crashed as it was out of battery and there were no points to plug into at Maccas, so headed back to the car to get on our way. Car Dead. The dashboard lights came up, then as Pete turned the key everything stopped dead. We tried a couple more times and it was even more dead. No lights, no turning engine, nothing. The lights hadn't been left on so we had no idea what could have caused it. By this stage the weather had turned to minus freeze your bloody hands off, and we shivered our way to a phone booth to call the AA. Two and half hour wait. So back to the car to sit and wait. Every so often I'd check the internal light so see if the power had come back a little, but she was still dead. Pete & I got to talking about his mum and how I'm sure she would have been happy that we were visiting her home town. We opened a little bottle of whisky that Gerard & Jan had given Pete for Christmas and made a toast to her. Then I had an idea to find a stone and take it back to her grave in Australia, so that she could be connected with her homeland in Scotland. As the words finished coming out of my mouth, the AA show up. We looked at each other ... freaky. They open the hood, he says, can you try and start it for me so I can see what it does, Pete gets in and the car starts straight up like nothing was wrong. Unbelievable. This was a car that wouldn't even turn over. It was that dead that the clock had reset itself. So we picked up a stone and promised to visit her grave when we get home.