My first full day of Lisbon was actually not spent in Lisbon itself but in a town not far away called Sintra. This place is particularly notable for bursting with palaces and villas. I had bought my train ticket the evening before (4.80 round trip!), so I showed up to the station and just hopped right on the train. Now I knew that Sintra was a popular destination for day-trippers from Lisbon, myself included, but I wasn’t quite expecting the sheer volume that I would encounter.

I had a relatively early train to catch, but I was thankfully only a 5 minute walk to the station. I popped into a bakery just outside the station to grab a couple custard tarts for the road (they ended up being some of the tastiest I'd had yet, probably because they were still fresh!) and went in to find my train. I needed to go just one stop and then change trains to board one bound for Lisbon. I had managed to book a single seat (rather than a seat part of a pair of seats) on my Lisbon-bound train, so I had at least a bit of room and quiet for the roughly 2.5 hour trip.

After a relatively lazy start to my day, I headed off in search of Porto's famed Majestic Café. Opened in 1921, it is a pretty little spot living in the splendour of the Belle Epoque era, with marble table tops, gorgeously engraved leather banquettes and liveried waiters. I ordered their "Majestic" French toast along with a pastel de nata and a hot chocolate, and happily people-watched while I ate my tasty treats. I didn't mind that most were other tourists because the interiors were pretty enough to keep me occupied (and the goings-on of other tourists is always fascinating).

Porto would be the first stop in a brand new country for me! I know very little about Portugal--their culture and even their food (other than their famed egg tarts, I don't know that I've ever had Portuguese food). I usually take the opportunity afforded by getting airfare covered to attend an academic conference to wander for a week or so afterwards. I had literally stared at a map of Europe to consider where to go after Glasgow and thought that a sunny sojourn in southern Europe (particularly after the veritable fall-like weather in Scotland) sounded like a brilliant idea. Hence, Portugal!

My lovely collaborator and hotel roommate Susanne Brouwer had suggested going on one of the conference-suggested day tours, and I was happy for the chance to get out of the city for a day. Organized by Rabbie’s, it was a small, 16-person tour (including several friends from the conference) that took us to Culzean Castle and along the Ayrshire Coast.

On our travels, we always have focused on just taking photos--peering and squinting and desperately trying to capture beautiful, singular moments in time. This last trip, however, saw us branching out of our comfort zone and trying our hand at video. David had a lot of fun playing with the focus and composition, and I had an equally fun time editing things together.  

I was a bit sad to not be able to lounge in our luxurious digs for longer, but we awoke and finished packing up and consolidating our things, as we’d be dropping off the car today. We headed down to the breakfast room for a lovely breakfast, with a friendly, older couple chatting us up about our travel plans. Despite the abundance of castles in Scotland, we hadn’t yet actually gone into any–I think in large part because hasn’t really been that kind of trip. We wanted to cover a fair bit of ground and see the countryside more so than castles, but we felt like it’d be nice to see at least one castle.

Today would be a day of whisky, and we were up bright and early in preparation for it. Our first stop would be one of the smallest Speyside distilleries, Benromach. I had booked David for an “Essential” tour, which involved a distillery tour and a tasting of 4 drams of their different whiskies. We set off from out rural retreat in Inverarnie towards Forres. The tour was set to start at 11 am, and due to traffic (a novel occurrence for us!), we managed to just squeak in on time. I joined as well, taking the basic “Welcome” tour, which was only 6 GBP and included a dram of whisky.

We slept so well that we almost overslept, waking up just 5 minutes before we’d scheduled to have breakfast. We hurriedly made ourselves presentable and stumbled out to the kitchen/dining area. Our host had prepared a lovely breakfast for us according to our requests—David was feeling meat-heavy, opting for black pudding, bacon and haggis, while I went with a poached egg, mushrooms, sausages and a potato scone. It was all super delicious, and we were glad to get a hearty meal in us before our driving day.

The scenery was verdant and lush–beautiful rolling hills dotted by farms and the ubiquitous sheep. We thought it might be a good idea for me to get a bit of practice driving in case I needed to later now (such as on the day of the distillery tours). Honestly, I wasn’t so much disturbed by being on the wrong side of the road so much as by not knowing where the left side of the car was, which made driving on narrow roads an interesting challenge.

Not that our time in Edinburgh hadn’t been a blast, but David and I were both excited to get in a car and get exploring. As it was a Sunday, the earliest we could get our rental was 10 am, which ultimately was fine for us as it gave me a chance to finish packing things up and D an opportunity to walk over to the rental office. With our Toyota Auris in hand, we bid goodbye to our hosts and tackled our first challenge: getting out of Edinburgh. While I had Google directions ready to go, we somehow (repeatedly) missed the street it wanted us to turn onto, so we ended up just pointing the car in a westwardly direction and hoping for the best.