Montreal 7 – Winnipeg 2

Ça sent la coupe!

Photo a day challenge – January 2012

1. You
2. Breakfast
3. Something you adore
4. Letterbox
5. Something you wore
6. Makes you smile
7. Favourite
8. Your sky
9. Daily routine
10. Childhood
11. Where you sleep
12. Close-up
13. In your bag
14. Something you’re reading
15. Happiness
16. Morning
17. Water
18. Something you bought
19. Sweet
20. Someone you love
21. Reflection
22. Your shoes
23. Something old
24. Guilty pleasure
25. Something you made
26. Colour
27. Lunch
28. Light
29. Inside your fridge
30. Nature
31. You, again

Being a recent MacConvert, I don’t have interesting stories about getting a Mac when I was 7 and becoming the envy of the geeks at my school, or how Steve touched and changed my life. The first Apple product I bought was the first generation iPod Nano, and I bought it for my LovelyWife as a wedding anniversary present.

All evening yesterday I watched my Twitter timeline as it was overflowing with an outpouring of 140-characters eulogies for a man I didn’t know. A man I never met. Why was I feeling sad at Steve’s passing? I only made one comment:

The truth is that I’m not sad at Steve’s passing. It is a sad and tragic event, everybody deserves more time with their loved ones. But just a few weeks ago I was already in “funny but slightly inappropriate mode” about Apple co-founder’s death. So why the weird feelings now? To borrow Backpacking Dad’s sentiment‘s words:

It’s crazy to be maudlin about a total stranger’s death. And it’s crazier to write so many words about him when I did not write a thing about my brother’s Mother-In-Law’s loosing battle with Cancer. I’m sure it’s transference.

My brother’s Mother-In-Law – Mado – will soon die of a brain Cancer. When she goes, people on Twitter will not spend a night Tweeting about her. They will not make graphics with her quotes, direct people to watch her videos on YouTube. In all fairness, Mado is not a public figure. She didn’t invent cool computers and technological gadgets.

But for her family, she did change everything.

So Rest in Peace Steve. I didn’t know you but you did touch my life.

To Mado’s family. To Benoit, Stéphanie, Eliott and Juliette; I love you guys.

Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates & Garfield minus Garfield

Lead pencil & pen on paper. Click for original size.

Not my TV, but we have the same model.

Like most people of our generation*, we rarely just “watch TV”. Ever since laptops became part of our daily routine (and then iPods, Blackberries, iPhones and iPads) we can often be seen watching TV while surfing the Web, reading the news, playing a game.

*I don’t think it’s really a generation thing. When people talk about the raise of Digital Multitasking, they mostly talk about the Millennials (or Generation Y) or the Digital Natives (Generation Z), but I’m a Generation X myself and I’ve been “digitally multitasking” ever since I could get my hand on an electronic device. Anyways.

The evenings in our house are pretty relaxed. TV playing in the background, and us sitting on the couch with our iPads. This is the joy of a DVR, you can always rewind if you missed something important.

On Monday night, we were watching “Les Chefs”, a quebecer version of “Top Chef”, and LovelyWife would comment that we should cook this, and maybe we could put that on the menu for next week, and maybe we could cook a sabayon soon because it looked easy enough to do. Nothing too extraordinary here, I’m sure we all do this. For example, whenever I watch the DIY Network, I’m taken with this urge to tile something. Nothing wrong with that, right?

But then I started noticing that LovelyWife would make comments that were in line with the commercials shown. LovelyWife has always been “in tune” with advertisement, but she was taking it to a whole other level. And this is from a woman who would probably be buying every Snuggie, Baby Bullit, Magic Bullet,

A grocery store ad would come on, and she’ll say: “Maybe I could be a butcher as a second career?”

An RV ad would come on, and she’ll say: “Do you think we should rent an RV for our summer vacations?”

An ad for a deck sealer would come on, and she’ll say: “I wonder if the neighbor will repaint his fence this year?”

You might think that it’s a bad thing to be influenced by TV like that. I don’t. In fact I absolutely love that LovelyWife is influenced by what she sees on TV.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to add the playboy channel to my subscription package.

Duck Face Time

Scared Face Time

Normal Face Time.

I love my brother.

Driving from Elgin to Pitlochry

Elgin – Hunting for Whisky

Elgin is the proud locale of Gordon & MacPhail. From their website:

Located in the north-east of Scotland in the heart of the world famous whisky producing region of Speyside, Gordon and MacPhail is an independent family owned and managed firm which has been bottling Single Malt Whiskies for over 115 years.

Since they bottle their own Whisky, the potential for finding some extra-special, maybe even unique item was pretty strong. So we decided to swing by their store before driving out to the Craighorns and Dalwhinnie Distillery. The store opened at 9:00, and we got there at 9:01. Unfortunately, laws in Scotland forbid shops to sell alcohol before 10:00, so we had an hour to kill.

We went to the “Café Écosse”, thinking that we may be served in French… Instead we heard the thickest accent of the whole trip. After ordering coffee, we were asked:

“Something something, something bla bla bla. Something something bla bla?”

I didn’t get anything. Martin just nodded. It turns out we were asked about our enjoyment of the weather.

Picture borrowed from http://www.scotlandsfoodtrail.com as it looks like I didn’t take any pictures of the store. Weird.

Back to the store, where we bought some very nice bottles. You can read about my Edradour 2002 Tokaji Matured in this post.

Decisions, Decisions.

Unfortunately the whole Whisky hunting put us way behind schedule, and we had to drop both having lunch at the top of the Cairngorms and going to the Queen’s View in order to make Dalwhinnie Distillery and Pitlochry on time. In hindsight, I would probably drop the whisky hunting for the chance to eat lunch on the highest restaurant in Scotland. On the bright side, this gives us something to do when we return in a few years. Right?

The friendliest Scot was a Spanish guy?

On our way to Dalwhinnie, we stopped for lunch at the Tipsy Laird, where we met the friendliest Scot of them all, a Spanish dude name George (pronounced “whore-gay”), who spoke some French, proceeded to buy us beer, whisky and he even wanted to pay for our food. Soon after we arrived, the place filled up with a busload of tourist, and we had an interesting chat with the tour guide about distilleries. It seems that most tourists are not really into Whisky, so they were taken to a “cute and cheap” distillery. We made a mental note to avoid those tours, and also to avoid George who was hitting hard on our ladies.

Driving to Dalwhinnie

We had to drive through the Cairngorms National Park to get to Dalwhinnie. The drive was beautiful, but it played with my sense of scale.

Driving through the Cairngorms.

When you look at the previous picture, your mind may trick you into thinking that the bushes you see in the forefront are normal sized bushes, roughly 3-4 feet high. In fact, those bushes are a mere 6 inches off the ground.

The car in the bushes. Sort of.

That means that if you decide to stop for a pee break (Peeing behind a bush in a National Park in Scotland allows me to cross off multiple “to-dos” from my bucket list) you may have to walk 15 minutes before you can pee without seeing the car.

Eventually we made it to Dalwhinnie for a tour and a tasting. Unfortunately for us, they were out of the Dalwhinnie 29 year-old, so they had to replace it with a 36 year-old instead. What a shame.

Top row: 15yo, 15 yo Distiller’s Edition Bottom row: 20yo single cask, 36 yo.

I was slightly disappointed with Dalwhinnie. It is the first Whisky I ever tasted, so it holds a special place in my heart. I was hoping to find a distillery exclusive bottle there, but it seems that Dalwhinnie focuses mainly on their two staples, the 15yo and the 15yo DE. Even the 20yo and 36yo were not for sale at the distillery. C’est la vie.

I took a few minutes to call my dad to wish him a Happy Birthday from the highest distillery in Scotland, to which he replied: “You’re still in Scotland? I’m in front of this crappy bar here.” That’s my dad. He used to call me when I was in Switzerland to ask me if it was raining, since it was raining at home.

We made one final stamp run – making our total stamps 6 and 8, enough for everyone to get a quaich – and made our way to the last B&B. We had food at the Fern Cottage Restaurant & Tea House. The food was great, except for the part where Martin had a piece of broken glass in his fish. Yikes! We turned in for the night soon after.

Pitlochry to Edinburgh

After a really good breakfast, we packed the car for the last time.

Packed “boot”.

As you can see, we’re getting better at packing the car – we have more stuff than when we arrived and it looks like we have more room to spare. We quickly made our way to Edinburgh where we first drop the wives at the hotel and then dropped the car at the rental place. The rental place didn’t give me any trouble about the scratched car, as I had taken the “no deductible” package.

We spent our last afternoon in Edinburgh relaxing, doing some last minute shopping, repacking our luggage to avoid any surcharges and having a few pints on the Royal Mile. We ended the day by returning to The Doric for our last meal. It was a fantastic day.

The return of the King

Next morning, we left our friends behind – they had a later flight – and hopped on a taxi to get to the Edinburgh Airport, where we got there way too early and had to wait to drop our luggage. The flight to London was uneventful.

When we landed in London, I had a plan to make up for our Maple Leaf Lounge adventure on the way in – if you recall, they didn’t allow us to use the Lounge because we were leaving from a different terminal – so we made our way to the Lounge. I explained the situation, and after some typing on the computer the lady at the counter allowed us to use the lounge. The lounge is very cool, it has free WiFi, free food and drinks, showers and big comfy couches. As a bonus, it was hot-dog Friday. Our friends met us in the lounge and we had a few drinks. Could this day get any better?

The short answer to that question my friends is no.

If you follow me on Twitter and are my friend on Facebook, you already know that our plane was delayed four hours because of a mechanical issue. Four long hours sitting in the plane on the runway is a really long time. The flight staff was very good, and except for a few passengers (assholes), everyone took it in stride and made the best out of it.

After a while, they allowed us to use our cell phones. I was monitoring the flight status through my Air Canada App, and they kept pushing back the departure time every half hour or so.

Looks like we’re taking off soon…

Well. Maybe not.

Around 18:00 we started hoping to be “stuck” in London for the night. This would give us the chance to quickly visit and have a decent meal. Alas, they fixed the plane and we ended up taking off around 19:45 local time.

By the way, I don’t think there’s anything more stressful than being told that there’s something wrong with the hydraulics, than be updated that they are trying to fit a part from a different plane in ours but they’re not sure it’ll work, then be told that engineers are doing calculations to make sure the part is compatible only to be told we’re taking off a few minutes later. Then the pilot proceeded to test all the flaps for what seemed a very long time while taxiing to the strip.

When we took off, some passengers started clapping, but that lasted a whole 5 seconds. After the whole hydraulics situation, all the noises seemed abnormal to us. We also stayed quite low – around 8,000 feet – for quite some time while the plane would slightly bank left, then right, then climb a little, then dive. It seemed to me that the pane was tested at low altitude, just in case. We then did the same thing at 16,000 feet. about 40 minutes after taking off, we reached our cruising altitude of 36,000 feet. Flight plan was changed to save time – but not fuel I suspect.

Pilots shaved one full hour by flying in a “straight line”.

Finally, we landed at 22:00 local time, only three hours late. Made it home by 23:00. Of course I had to unpack and put away everything before going to bed.

I was back.

And thus concludes the massive recap. Thank you for reading all those crazy posts. I still have a few things about the trip to tell you, so I’m planning a few other posts: A “Distillery Edition”, where I’ll tell you all about how whisky is made and a “The difference between a trip and a vacation”. Stay tuned!

You can read all the recaps by following these links:

• Scotland Recaplet
• 1,737 Pictures
• The Loot
• Scotland Recap – Part one
• Scotland Recap – Part deux
• Scotland Recap – Part three
• Scotland Recap – Part four
• Scotland Recap – Part five
• Ode to Secret-Scotland

You can read parts one, deux, and three before moving on. Hopefully, this is the very last part, as I don’t want to turn this into the Wheel of Time.

Driving from Skye to Inverness

Saying goodbye to Portree. The hotels were crap, but the port was beautiful.

The drive from Skye to Inverness was pleasant, the landscapes are magnificent and the Scots, even though they drive like mad men, are very courteous drivers.

Only picture taken of a passing place. This is on a 60mph road.

Loch Ness Cruise

Of course, we couldn’t visit Scotland without doing something on or around Loch Ness. We decided to take a short hour cruise on the Loch, and it was very cool.

We’re on a boat, motherf*ckers!

Great shot illustrating the weather in Scotland. Sunny where we are, raining in the background.

The cruise took us near Urquhart Castle.

When we arrived in Inverness, we first met with our B&B hosts, who were very helpful and provided us with a plethora of information about Inverness. We had lunch at Leakey’s – an old church converted into a second-hand bookstore with a café on the mezzanine. It was like being in a very old bookstore, managed by a crazy librarian who knows where every single book is.

View from the mezzanine at Leakey’s.

We then wandered about the city, and found a very small Café where we wrote postcards for our family.

Cappuccino and postcards.

This is what I did with my parent’s postcards. If you can’t tell, I actually wrote across two postcards so they couldn’t read one card without the other.

We then had an awesome dinner at the Mustard Seed. The ambiance of the restaurant is very cozy, and we were lucky enough to be waited on by Annie The Belgian waitress, which meant that we could have a nice relaxing dinner. Let me explain.

The Mustard Seed.

Our experience in Scotland about meals are that Scots are very efficient when it comes to food, sometimes to the point where us tourists may feel rushed at times. You see Scotland has the “English Pub mentality” where when you go to the pub to have a few pints, you’d most likely stand at the bar and slam one pint after another. There are a few tables in pubs, but those are mainly for tourists (I assume). The same principle seems to be ported over to meals. If you want to relax and have a long meal, you have to fight with the staff for them to let you drink your beer in peace. Otherwise, they’ll stand at the table until you place your order, and once the order’s placed, you’re served as quickly as possible.

Higher end restaurants even have a “waiting room” where you first sit, grab a beer and order. Once your appetizers are ready, you’re asked to move to the table where the food gets there 5 seconds after you do.

So you can understand our joy when we detected a French accent on our waitress at the Mustard Seed. We told her about our experience, she said she understood and was going to run interference with the kitchen. We had a very relaxing meal.

Heading back to our B&B at 11pm. Can’t get over the fact it’s still daylight-ish.

From Inverness to Elgin via MacAllan

We were only driving a short distance the next day, but had a few stops planned on the way. We started with a brief stop at Fort George, walked around, took pictures. Fort George looks a lot like “La citadelle de Québec”.

Canons at the Citadel

With 15′ drops everywhere, what can go wrong really?

Oh… right. Oops.

After goofing off at the Fort, we made our way to Benromach, small and charming but unfortunately the product is just okay. We quickly made a detour to Cardhu to get another stamp – enough to get the Quaich, yay! and then had lunch at the Mash Tun. There were dogs everywhere. I had a really nice burger, and the beer – the sheep shagger – was very good.

Glenfarclas “Family Casks collection” on the wall at the Mash Tun. The 1971 dram was 87£.

The main goal of the day was to take the Precious Tour at the MacAllan. Ian our tour guide called us Americans, and I was nice enough to not call him British in return. We tasted a lot of good whisky, confirming once again that I like the expensive stuff.

That 30 year-old was awesome. The 12? Not so much.

After that we did a stamp run at Cragganmore. We got there with 8 minutes to spare and were told that they were closing in 8 minutes so they couldn’t give us a dram. To quote Martin: “Well, next time we have only 8 minutes to buy a Whisky, we’ll buy something else”. We got the stamp and got out of there by a very interesting backroad / field. We made our way to Elgin for our next stop.

Elgin, the Pines.

The B&B was very nice. We had some issue booking a place at a recommended restaurant, so we decided to walk to the general restaurant area and see what was available. We met some very drunk friendly Scots standing in front of the Muckle Cross and they told us that we absolutely had to have food there, that it was steak night, and that the drinks were cheap.

The Muckle Cross.

We had 2 steaks, 2 pints and 2 desserts for 17£, which is by far the cheapest meal we had while in Scotland. We also had jaeger bombs with the drunk friendly Scots.

The drunk friendly Scots: Al, Gordon, Lesley and Michelle.

After that lovely evening, we retired to the B&B. We called home and my son sounded really sad. We’ll be home in 3 short days.

And thus concludes part four of the massive Scotland recap. Stay tuned for the last part  of this magnificent adventure.

You can read all the recaps by following these links:

• Scotland Recaplet
• 1,737 Pictures
• The Loot
• Scotland Recap – Part one
• Scotland Recap – Part deux
• Scotland Recap – Part three
• Scotland Recap – Part four
• Scotland Recap – Part five
• Ode to Secret-Scotland

Driving to the Caslte

Around 5:15am we made our way down the stairs and were met outside by our host Gibson. He got up at the crack of dawn just to say goodbye to us. We had to get up really early to be on the 6:00 am ferry, because even though our place was booked on the ferry, the bad weather of the previous days possibly meant that there was going to be a lot of people hoping to get on the ferry. We got there with plenty of time to spare, and settled in for the two hour tour.

Still feeling the aftermath of last night’s party.

On the way to the Castle, we stopped at Kilmartin Glen to visit the Kilmartin Stones, the Cairns and the standing stones.

750 year-old stones.

Inside a Cairn. This stone has a map of the other Cairns engraved on it.

Visiting Kilmartin was a great way to finally cement that the notion of safety in Scotland is completely different than the North American one. We already were exposed to “potential danger” while near Tarbert when we stopped for dinner one night – the parking lot was right on the edge of the river, and I mean right on the edge as in no railings, not cement curb, nothing. You move one more foot and you’re in the river after a 10′ drop. The staircases in the Castles we visited would never be considered “tourist-friendly” in America. Kilmartin was just the icing on the cake, because the Cairns and the standing stones are located in a field with live animals.

Cow in the field. I am not zooming.

You only get one small sign at the first gate that says: “This is a field with live animals. Leave all gates as you found them”. We didn’t go to Starbucks in Scotland, but I have a suspicion that they’re not writing “Caution: Content may be hot” on their cups. They probably write: “If you burn yourself, you’re an idiot”.

After that, we drove to Oban, where we were completely underwhelmed by the distillery visit. We bought chocolates and made our way to our B&B for the night – an actual castle.

Staying at the Castle

Barcaldine Castle

When we got the the Castle – under pouring rain – we were surprised by the size of the door. Barcaldine Castle is a defensive residence, and there’s only one door, it’s small and located just at the bottom of the spiraling staircase.

Using Facetime in the Great Hall. Castle + WiFi = Win.

After a slight issue with our booking, we spent the evening relaxing in the Great Hall with a nice dram in front of a warm fire. It’s good to be the King!

There’s a secret door in this picture. Also, the ghost of the “Blue Lady” sometimes appears in that chair.

Driving to Skye

The drive from Barcaldine Castle to Portree, Skye was beautiful.

Look at those mountains!

As we were approaching Skye, the landscape started to change and the mountains were getting bigger and bigger.

Me, silently laughing at another tourist. We’re really just stretching our legs, there’s nothing to capture here – I think Martin is taking a picture of the car.

One fun thing that happened quite a lot is that we would attract other tourists where ever we went. For example, we would stop fairly often to stretch, walk a little, pee in the bushes or take some pictures. Every time we would pull over, it would take less than a minute for another car to park behind ours and we’d then have another tourist taking pictures of whatever we were taking pictures of.

There can be only one!

Of course we had to stop at Eilean Donan Castle. If you don’t get the caption below the picture, Eilean Donan is the castle seen at the beginning of the movie Higlander (the first movie). Well, it’s seen in pretty much every movie that needs a Scottish Castle scene.

After a pit-stop at Talisker Distillery, we arrived in Portree for a two nights stay.

Staying on Skye, day one

First of all, and forgive me but there is no delicate way of saying this, our hotel in Portree was a dump. On top of that, they messed-up our booking and had to put us in two different hotels. This was quite a shock after spending a night in a Castle. Our friends room was dirty, ours was above a discotheque, right across the bus terminal. These were by far the worst accommodations of the trip.

We had average food in an average restaurant, and quickly turned in and tried to sleep. I think our spirits were crushed.

Skye, day two

On the morning of day two, thanks to the weather cooperating, everyone was in a better mood despite the ridiculously small amount of sleep we had. We left the hotels really early and hunted for breakfast. We discovered that Scots are not a nation of breakfast eater – at least not in the sense where they woulds go out and have breakfast in a restaurant. After a while, we managed to find a hotel where they would serve us breakfast.

After that, we visited Dunvegan Castle, home of the MacLeod Chiefs for the past 800 years. The castle visit was fairly interesting but the gardens were fantastic. I took an insane amount of close-ups there.

These will end-up in one of our bathrooms.

Neist Point, the windswept lighthouse

The highlight of the trip for LovelyWife is most probably the visit to the Neist Point windswept lighthouse. And when they say “Windswept”, they are not kidding. We’re talking 60mph winds here.

Trust me, the pictures don’t do justice to the landscape.

My brave LovelyWife in front of the punk sheep.

That’s a 150′ drop. Luckily, the wind comes from the sea.

We ended the day with a brilliant meal at Marmelade, before sleeping one last time at our rubbish hotels.

And thus concludes part three of the massive Scotland recap. Stay tuned for parts four (and possibly five – I’m turning into Robert Jordan here!  of this magnificent adventure.

You can read all the recaps by following these links:

• Scotland Recaplet
• 1,737 Pictures
• The Loot
• Scotland Recap – Part one
• Scotland Recap – Part deux
• Scotland Recap – Part three
• Scotland Recap – Part four
• Scotland Recap – Part five
• Ode to Secret-Scotland