Part I – Edinburgh

Part II – Isle of Skye, Harris, and Lewis

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Day 7 – Inverness and Lochness – Scottish Highlands

Urquhart_Castle’s history can be traced back almost a millennia to the Picts, early settlers of Scotland.  Supposedly a Pict King was converted to Christianity here by St. Columba from Iona.  The castle was built in the 7th Century and them intentionally blown up by the British at end of the 18th century to keep the Jacobites from overtaking it.  It sits on the edge of Loch Ness, providing a unique view out over the water.

River Ness runs though the town of Inverness, in the Scottish Highland, which is equal parts historic and hip. Inverness is also on the northern coast of the Great Glen Fault. This fault line formed most of the Lochs over 300 million years.

We ate at The Kitchen Restaurant which was an unplanned treat. If you can believe it, we fought over the last piece of pickled herring (if you can believe it!) and shared a fabulous duck entree.  We then got gelato at Miele’s Gelatoria, they even have non-dairy options.  Finally we ended the night with a few half pints of the local beer at Black Isle Bar.  It was a real treat to sample the micro-brew culture of the Scottish Highlands.

Day 8 – Clava Cairns and Culloden – Scottish Highlands

Clava Cairns are ancient Bronze Age burial sites, shaped like a slabbed letter C.  (C is for Cairn, that’s good enough for me.) The other edge is large boulders that hold the larger stones.  They are about 1.5 meters high and about 30m in diameter.  They are found all other the Scottish Highlands and Ireland as well.

Culloden Battlefield was chalked full of history about a tragic last stand in what could be described as a British civil war.  The Scotsman that fought for the insurgency of Bonny Prince Charlie were ill prepared to fight against the heavy artillery of the British government.  Yet they bravely and tragically fought the lost cause anyway, which is why it is romantically commemorated.  The show Outlander tells the story of the highlander clans from the perspective of a time traveling doctor (no, not THE Doctor, that’s a different show).

Day 9 – Stirling Castle – Stirlingshire, Scotland

Stirling is just south of the Scottish Highlands, so please forgive us from including in our “Highlands” post.  It might have been our favorite town, it is filled with history yet light on the tourists.  The old town sits on a hill, with Stirling Castle on top.

For our anniversary dinner we when to the Stirling Highland Hotel and had a lovely 3 course meal. The big surprise was that Juliette and selected the location because of one unique feature.  Their building used to be a high school and in 1888 an observatory was added to house a one of a kind telescope. Cooper was thrilled to photograph this awesome little rotunda with rotating roof.  Although the hotel runs tours, only the Stirling Astronomical Society can use the telescope to star gaze.  It is worth coming back one day.

Day 10 – Stirlingshire – Scotland

Another treat for pop culture geeks was our visit to Doune Castle, Deanston. You might recognize it from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (if so, according to the very comedic woman running our guest house, you are probably male).  Otherwise, and more recently, the castle can be seen in the TV show Outlander as well as Game of Thrones. Visitors are given complimentary headset guides narrated by the Python Director and historian Terry Jones.  Outlander fans on the tour are occasionally treated to the dulcet tones of the historical heartthrob Sam Heughan.  Come early to this castle to get the best experience, sans large crowds.  Be warned, you will run into at least one “Thrones-er”, “Sasanach”, or Knight that says “Ni!”

We recommend taking a tour of the Deanston distillery, if the spirit compels you, since it is very close to Doune Castle.

Not only did we get to taste a dram or two but we also got to see the entire facility, including the aging room.  Deanston may be the only distillery in the world that relies solely on its own renewable power generation.  The facility had previously been a cotton mill, built in 1830, that harnessed the flowing water of the adjacent river Teith to run turbines.  After a few upgrades the plant now generates enough energy that the distillery only uses 25% of it, the rest feeds the grid!

Airth castle is a funky hotel in Airth.  There we met Wallace McIntosh, an old English Sheep Dog. He ran right for Cooper, who was tickled purple!

Our final stop was in The Helix in Falkirk at sunset.  There we admired the grand modern horse sculptures known as the “Kelpies”.  Kelpies are a mythological creature know for taking the form of a horse and feared for dragging their victims under water.  Luckily these Kelpies just lit up and remained inert.  It was the perfect end to an amazing tour of Scotland.

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Day 1 – Edinburgh – Scotland

On our first day in Scotland we landed safely at the airport and made our way into town. It was challenging for Juliette to adjust her driving to the other side of the road, but she managed to get us to our guesthouse in one piece. The city of Edinburgh was full of life! We opted in and took a city bus tour on our first day to get the lay of the land. I loved weaving in and out of the streets and hearing all of the stories of Edinburgh’s past. We glimpsed beautiful stone buildings, monuments while hearing bag pipe music flowing through the air.

We arrived just before Edinburgh Festival so the town was slowly getting ready for one of it’s busiest theatre season.

After our bus tour we visited a local fun house, the Camera Obscura!

One of the best meals of our trip was at The Witchery near Edinburgh castle. The occult decor set the mood, the food was magical, and they even accommodated Juliette’s casin allergy.

Day 2 – Edinburgh – Scotland

On our second day, we took an English style horseback ride with Seacliff Stables and glimpsed the famous Bass rock from North Berwick beach.

We also toured Edinburgh Castle located at the end of the Royal Mile. The Military Tattoo was also in full effect when we visited. It is an annual series of events held in August where British Armed Forces, Commonwealth and international military bands perform in teams on the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle. We didn’t have a chance to see the performance because tickets are sold out far in advance.

We ended our last night in Edinburgh with a very extravagant 6 course meal at The Timberyard. If you have the time (and the resources) you must stop by for some of the finest cuisine in Scotland.

After dinner we took a late night precarious hike up to Arthur’s Seat to see the city filled with light.

Day 3 – Fort William – Scotland

On day three we hit the open road, delicious sandwiches in tow to make our way to Fort William and the Glenfinnan Viaduct. The viaduct is famous for being featured in Harry Potter, taking the Hogwarts express to the school of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

We stayed in the lovely Mansefield Guesthouse for the night and were treated to a delicious breakfast the next morning. Having a full breakfast became routine for us, and helped to give us energy for the day ahead.

Our Scotland trip continues in Part II: The Isle of Skye and Beyond

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What was so impressive about the CHOW exhibit in the Museum of Food and Drink‘s pop-up space was the way that the Chinese restaurant in America was contextualized as an important expression of the immigrant experience. It powerfully demonstrated how a rich immigrant culture combined exclusionary tactics of the dominant society can create a thriving sub-culture.

Chinese Food History

When you walk into the space your senses are overwhelmed with the smell of blueberry infused fortune cookies baking.  On display are original cooking tools and vintage menus of Chinese restaurants from across United States.

The first craze of Chinese food was in the early 1800s when Americans were eating a dish that they referred to as “Chop Suey”.  This dish was likely a stir-fried mixture of animal innards and vegetables tossed in a soy sauce.

In the middle of the exhibit a fortune cookie machine is on display.  Here a visitor can watch all the steps to the process of making a fortune cookie on a mass scale.  Best part, eating unlimited cookies!

The machine is a part of MoFad’s Twitter campaign #ProjectFortune. It’s an interactive experience! Each cookie contains a custom fortune submitted via twitter with the hashtag, or entered into the kiosk here at the museum. Getting them printed and cut to size must be a chore!  The cookie recipe changes every so often, currently they use blueberry and raspberry extract, which we have never tasted in a cookie before.  The cookies are addicting!  Luckily you can take even more home with you in a take-out box.  We also learned that they donate the excess to a food pantry.

There is also a space that features cool smell generating machines called the “Smell Synth”.  You can mix fragrances together to create smell recipes.  Cooper got creative and mixed up some stank like a olfactory DJ.

Time to Taste!

Our favorite part of the exhibit was the Chinese food tasting from a professional food consultant.  The custom printed chopsticks were a nice touch.  We also loved that the bamboo bowls were biodegradable and they use NYC Dept of Sanitation’s new curbside organics collection bin to collect food waste.

This might be a small museum but it packs a lot of history, fragrance, and flavor!

P.S. Demonstrous Productions helped them out with a fundraising video, they deserve a bigger space!

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This weekend we extended our Valentines celebration into March by visiting the Raaka Virgin Chocolate Company. We took a tour of the space, were educated on their bean to bar journey and then we were able to make our own bespoke chocolate bars. While on our tour we learned about the whole bean to bar organic vegan chocolate process.

Happiness is Unroasted

The tour explained how Raaka cacao is gathered from plots of land in a forest in a technic referred to as agroforestry.  We watched a video that showed the harvesting, fermenting and drying process. Raaka sources most of their beans from the Dominican Republic and Tanzania.

Our tour guide took us through one of the most important steps to getting to those seeds. Winnowing is a procedure that cracks open the cacao and separates the husk from the nib. We tasted them, and Juliette thought they were smoky and kind of pecan like. Cooper thought they had the after taste of Twizzlers! Raaka has built their own custom winnower, a combination of a standard juicer and shop vacuum that sucks up all the lighter husks. They also donate these discarded husks to schools or urban farms to be composted.

Bump and Grind (MIX)

The next stage of the process takes 3 days. During that period the coco nibs are put in vats with large stone melangeurs that are constantly spinning and grinding. Each day the nibs break down in the next vat and release cocoa butter, gradually mixing and creating a smooth consistency. We tasted a sample of chocolate that was just in it’s second day of chocolate emulsion: it was sweetened with coconut sugar but very gritty and crunchy. Not quite ready to be tempered. It’s the third day that the large milling machine is used to really reduce those grainy, crunchy particles that we were tasting and to give the chocolate it’s silky texture. Finally, the chocolate is transferred to the tempering machine where it is cooled to 85ºF then warmed back up to 130ºF back and forth to form molecular crystals.

Bespoke Vegan Chocolate Creations

We had a blast choosing additional ingredients to add to our bars before they went into the cold storage. There were coconuts flakes, dried bananas and peaches, and pine nuts and candied ginger. While we were waiting for the chocolate to cool we got a chance to taste five different chocolates.  There was one with pink salt, one with coconut milk, and Cooper’s favorite had ghost peppers!

We had a great time making and tasting their vegan chocolate!

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Vegan Shop Up has partnered with Pine Box Rock Shop many times and you can keep tabs on when the next event will be held by following their updates here. This was the first time we had attended the event and when we arrived just about 30 minutes after the start time the place was packed.  There were so many bodies you could really empathize with livestock!

I’m Dreaming of White Pizza…

I immediately found the Screamer’s Pizzeria stall and quickly ordered a white pizza. The pizza is made with almond ricotta vegan cheese, oregano and oil drizzle. The dough of the pizza was perfect. It was salty, garlic-y and soft and crispy. The cheese was so creamy and at $5 a slice I was very easily sold.

Cooper spotted our local vegan cheese shop Riverdel Cheese and the hearty looking grilled Havarti cheese sandwiches. The sandwich is made with vegan havarti cheese, pickles, and dijonaise on a thick country bread

The line for Peaceful Provisions doughnuts snaked through the whole space. You could hear ravenous vegans asking, “Is this seriously the line for the donuts?!” over and over again. The popularity peaked our interest so we begrudgingly joined the line and began making friends with others and chatted about all of the options while we waited for the sweet treats.

By the time we reached the front of the line we were able to order the coveted Cannoli and Key Lime donuts. The Cannoli doughnut is filled with decadent cannoli vegan cream, and topped with chocolate icing, crushed cannoli shells and powered sugar. The Key Lime doughnut is filled with lime cured and topped with a bruleed fluff.

These beauties were absolutely worth the wait.

We just had to share a picture of these gorgeous macaroons from Sweet Maresas, even though we didn’t try any.

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I have struggled with a casein allergy for most of my life and I have completely cut it out of my diet for 3 years now. Since casein is a protein found in milk, I can’t eat cheese, which is in almost everything on an Mexican food menu.  My casein allergy is nothing like lactose intolerance which affects the gastrointestinal tract.  If I eat milk, yogurt or cheese my lips will swell and my throat closes.

I ordered a three course vegan meal that I will probably be thinking about for weeks. I usually can’t ordered these options at other Mexican restaurants and I have to tell you that everything was delicious.

Esquites: Mexican Corn – Vegan Menu

The first course I ordered was a classic Mexican street food snack called Esquites. This is one of my all time favorite appetizers, and I haven’t had it in a very long time. Generally, it is prepared by boiling fresh corn in water and then it is sautéed in butter, onions, chiles and salt. It came to the table in an adorable small pot, topped with lime juice, chile powder, vegan chipotle mayo and vegan queso.

Mushroom Taco with Vegan Queso

The mushroom taco was by far my favorite dish. This taco had a very balanced umami flavor profile and had a meaty and creamy texture.  The mushrooms were perfectly sautéed in a pasilla salsa and were topped with vegan crema and queso. I could have eaten two more of these.

Mole Enchilada with Squash Blossoms and Vegan Crema

My main entree was three enchiladas filled with squash blossoms and topped with a classic mole sauce and vegan crema. The mole sauce in this dish is customarily made using a mole poblano pepper. Depending on the amount of fruit and chili pepper added, a mole sauce can be characteristically bitter and smokey. The vegan crema was a perfect paring for these enchiladas.

Cooper and I were able to take advantage of Citrico’s happy hour (Goes till 8:00pm) and both ordered some very strong and tart margaritas to go with our meal. Cooper ordered blue corn tortilla fish tacos. It isn’t vegan but it is tasty and pretty.

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On our fourth day in Iceland we visited the Laxnes Horse Farm just outside of Reykjavik for a two hour horse riding adventure. Laxnes Farm is own and operated by the Jónasson family and they are dedicated to the quality of life of these horses.

Icelandic horses are characteristically small, stocky, and strong and almost looking like large ponies. All of the horses had course full manes and tails. They are breed with a double coat which keeps them warm during the winter months in Iceland. Many Icelanders credit the horse for the survival of the Icelandic people.

We shared a beautiful ride through the mountains with our horses. Cooper was riding Dreki, which means Dragon, who was super chill.

Juliette riding her horse stjörnu (Star)

Day 5 – Journey Into A Glacier

This unique tour took us to the north, our GPS sent us through a “shortcut” that turned out to be a 3 hour drive on a gravel road.  It was a beautifully bleak route with occasional boulders blocking our path. We were a bit concerned that our rental car wouldn’t survive the trip!  Later, we found out the landscape we traveled through is called the “cold valley” and it was where outlaws and murders were sent as punishment.  If they could survive 3 years out there they were allowed to return to the community. Think about that: 3 years out there is either a life sentence or the death penalty depending on how you fair.

When we arrived we got in a special retired NATO vehicle that was designed to carry missiles.  This missile transporter now transports tourist over glaciers to show them the danger of global warming. Did you notice the pneumatic hoses leading to each tire?  Believe it or not the driver is able to control the inflation of each wheel with a tablet interface to regulate the tire traction with the glacier ice. Which means at certain moments of our trek we were quite literally gliding along the snow and ice of the glacier #intotheglacier

We were on top of the Langjokull, the second largest in Europe.  At the top we came upon an entrance to the largest man-made ice tunnel structure of its kind. Inside we learned that 80% of Iceland’s water comes from glacier and about 60% of the U.S. water comes from glacial sources.  The glaciologists estimate we only have 100 more years of glaciers on this planet due to the warming of the atmosphere.  They also told us that this glacier may completely melt away in 50 years.

This tour was very special and we both enjoyed it as a once in a lifetime experience.

Since there was still light out (the sun sets at 11:30pm!) we drove over to the hydro-electric plant near Deildartunguhver Geothermal Area. The Deildartunguhver Hot Spring, the centerpiece of the geothermal area, is the most powerful hot spring in Europe and the one with the highest flow rate. The boiling water it produces emerges at 97 °C and is used for heating the houses in the area via a pipeline to places far away such as Borgarnes, 34 kilometers away and the town of Akranes, 64 kilometers southwest.

Day 6 – Viking Sail, Blue Lagoon, Anniversary dinner

On our final day in Iceland, we celebrated our wedding anniversary. In the morning we took a private viking ship out onto the harbor in hopes of seeing puffin. Luckily, there were still some families enjoying life on a small island nearby and because we were on such a small boat we were able to get closer then the larger Puffin tour boats.

While on the boat we learned about the history of vikings from an Icelandic historian. Iceland was uninhabited until 874, until viking explores from Norway and the British isles discovered the land in the ninth century. Christianity wasn’t established in Iceland until 999 under the Norwegian king Olaf Tryggvason. We learned that the Sagas of Icelanders, also known as the family sagas are highly honored stories that were passed down from generations and covered all of the historical events that took place in 9th, 10th, and early 11th centuries.

After our boat ride we traveled to the most visited touristy attraction of our trip the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa. Located right next to the airport the Blue Lagoon is a spa, pool, and restaurant/bar. We bought tickets that included a free algae mask and alcoholic beverage.  The facilities felt very luxurious and relaxing. They have a strict hygiene policy, so be prepared to take a shower before entering the warm, rich mineral lagoon water.

The water temperature averages 99-167 °F, and once you enter there is a swim up bar and little hut that holds different types of skin masks. We spent the afternoon relaxing and recounting some of the places we had seen the days previous both feeling melancholy about it being our last day. Cooper started getting very pruney, so we took that as a signal to head out to make our dinner reservation.

We had reservations for dinner at the Fiskmarkadurinn, or Fish Market. The restaurant is highly rated and when they heard we were celebrating our anniversary quickly brought champagne with strawberries to our table.

We ordered items from their tasting menu: smoked puffin, whale, and salmon (YOLO). We also met a lovely couple sitting next to us that were traveling from DC. They were also celebrating their last night in town and it was nice to share some of our stories with them.

In conclusion, our trip to Iceland was phenomenal. I want to return again and see other parts of the island as well as the Northern lights.

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