1 distillery, 2 distillery, 3 distillery...floor

(Today is the end of our European adventure. We spent our last night in Frankfurt, Germany, and we fly out this afternoon. The past three weeks we've been in Italy, all over the place. Interestingly enough, Italy has been the hardest place for us to find Internet access for less than an arm and a leg, hence the delayed updates on the blog! So, we're just going to catch up from where we left off, and hopefully soon we will have all the stories and pictures up here that we wanted to share from our trip. Thank you for being patient!)

Scotland (October 7-9th)

So we came this far and in fact it would be a travesty to say goodbye to this region of the world without a visit to the isle of Islay the home of famous Scotch distilleries. So, in a surprise to Chris, we took a trip out to see what it's all about. It was a beautiful bus ride of 3 hrs and a ferry crossing.

The island itself is quite small with a hometown feel. We arrived at a cute B&B in Port Ellen and informed by our host that there is only 2 places to eat in town. So after we dropped our things off, we walked the one block consisted of finding the one open restaurant which was Indian cuisine. Kind of random in the middle of nowhere, but "why not?", we thought. Opening the door we were greeted with late 70's motif, orange shag carpet and Mariah Carey singing on a skipping cd. The giggles we wiped off our faces however when the food arrived. Delicious and authentic, can't ask for more than that!

One to the why we came here...
There are 8 Distilleries in fact, (and one brewery that Chris gleefully discovered) but alas we could only do justice to our top three. We're sure it was all planned just for us to come visit, because those three just happen to be all in a row about a mile apart from each other. Laphroaig, Lagavulin, and Ardbeg.

They all boast the uniqueness of the salt air peat being the secret ingredient in their scotch, the high quality of their copper distillery's and from there numerous nifty little facts that you immediately forget but appreciate nonetheless as soon as the tasting ensues.
Since we only had 2 nights and one full day, we made full use of it with sippings and questions, and even getting to stick our heads into washbacks, shovel peat and see the copper stills up close.

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The countryside between the Distilleries are rolling hills and sheep. We even had the chance to see modern shepherding which we learned now involves two guys on quads, one at the front and one at the back, and a sheep-dog nipping at the heels of the sheep. It was pretty entertaining.

We discovered just how Scotch and sheep live happily side by side on the Isle of Islay- the "s" is silent.