The first thing we did today was go feed reindeer! Yeah, you read that right. Apparently, reindeer used to live in Scotland and went extinct (because humans suck). In the 1950s, they reintroduced reindeer back to the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland (which has a sub-artic climate). The Scotland-version of Park Rangers take care of the herd with breeding and other managing and you can do a walk to visit them and give them feed from your hands.
It was pretty neat to both walk with the reindeer and also feed them but it was also amazing to see people passionately trying to help animals in the world.
After a delightful morning walking with a herd of reindeer and having them eat from our hands, it was off for another wonderful adventure.
*Note: The reindeer look bit grungy because it's shedding season right now...
We then headed to Dufftown (oh yeah!) to do a really awesome Distillery Walk. Dufftown used to be a whisky-making hub (it kinda still is today but it's more complicated now). Paul did his internet-magic and learned about a cool lady who does informal whisky-chocolate tours and knows a TON about the real whisky distillery history.
So we did her Distillery Walk, which was 3 miles of walking round trip. There were about 10 of us on the tour, and we would walk to a distillery, and she would then tell us a bunch of cool history facts about the distillery and then we would taste one of their whiskies and she would pair it with a different type of high-quality chocolate. We walked to about 7 distilleries to learn, drink, and devour chocolate.
It was the best distillery tour we have ever done. The info she gave us was WAY more interesting than the cookie-cutter info you get on normal distillery tours. She had paired the chocolate specifically with the whisky and it was really interesting to: (1) sip the whisky; (2) taste the chocolate; (3) sip the whisky again. The tastes of the whisky changed after the chocolate AND they just paired nicely together (she worked with a professional chocolatier to pair them).
It was a long walk but it was so incredible. If you are ever in Dufftown and you love whisky, look her up (or ask us for more details). 100% recommend that Distillery Walk!
After that, we made our way to our next airbnb, which was right on the ocean. It was really cute, though the guys weren't fans of the low ceilings.
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