The Braelossie Hotel And Restaurant Elgin

... drove all over the Caringorm Mountains today and I found some beautiful poisonous mushrooms which I have added photo's of.

Tomorrow we move on to Isle of Sky, supposedly one of the most beautiful places in Scotland. It will be a long drive but we should see many great things. Our driver is spoiling us and has been wonderful and it just could not have been a better trip for us. The lodgings have been luxurious and the food great.

... Malt Whiskey is made. It was very interesting and I asked lots of questions. We had a taste testing and discovered we still do not like the whiskey that much! To much taste of peat. They were nice to let us in as they were flooded around them and did a great tour for us.

We ended by seeing ancient sites dating back to 4-5000 BC. It was quite something!

... vacation. We went to the gates and although the police were standing by they allowed us to photograph and did not run us off. We waved at them when we left and they probably thought those crazy Americans! I told Gordon our driver that I was sure the Queen didn't get the message that we were coming or I was certain she would have sent us an invitation to tea!

Rothes is the little Scottish village where the Glen Grant Whiskey Distillery is located. It is part of the Speyside Whisky Trail, where the largest concentration of Scotch whisky distilleries is located in Scotland. This large valley is popular among distillers because this is where most of the barley is grown for the distillation process.

The distillery has a nice garden and a gift shop.

... didn't need new pad so took them back for a refund.
With no luck getting our brakes fixed in Aberdeen, Matt unclamped the brake line & hoped it wouldn't seize again.

We drove around the esplanade through heaps of little fishing villages and through heaps of green rolling hills (the brakes were working fine - must have just been a bit rusty since the car had not moved for a while) . It was about 10pm and the ...

... shoulder. I bought two bottles at the gift shop. The other night I had done a pretty basic search about getting it delivered to the us at some point. If you go to the monkey shoulder website, they say they can't ship it. But then I found a place called The Whisky Shop and I put in my country and all that jazz and it went through. So the moral of the story is, do you research kids! The distillery can't ship to the US ...

... later.

Next morning had to get up sort of early-ish to grab out breakfast in the castle. It was really nice sitting in the dinning room with all these portraits of the owners hanging on the wall, felt like I was a Lord or something. Breakky done time to hit the road and we soon arrive at the Queen's estate which you might know by the name of Balmoral. We had a great time wondering the grounds and exploring some of the castle (the bit we were allowed to go ...

... communication cleverness, it made me very jealous! One morning Nate and Roxy formed a deadly double team to wake us up, i'm not sure what we did to offend them but they got us good. First Nate busted the bedroom door down (he opened the door and then pushed it open hard into the wall) startling us awake and then Roxy marched in and then jumped between us in bed putting her head on the pillows! Being used to Crumbs (our 5kg ...

... Indeed a good friend of mine from uni has said as much. I'm a thinker, I dwell on things people say, on articles I read, on things that happen on a night out (perhaps a fight in a bar between people I don' know), I'm sensitive to the 'atmosphere' in a busy city centre with drunk people walking around and I can take comments (even good advice) the wrong way. In short I over-analyse life. It's also true that historically I've not been very good at ...

... a girly night, face masks, painting nails etc. Lots of crazy stories, especially from the host, who announced as I entered the door that she was gay... not sure why she had to tell me, but Vicki got quite a shock, she didn't know!!! Saturday morning, no sleep in, not to worry it was the most beautiful day, clear blue skies, crisp, fantastic. Luckily because we had planned to walk up the Cairngorms (a mountain range). It was so ...