a snippet about edinburgh...

Edinburgh is unlike any city I've ever been to. You can feel how ancient it is, the castle is visible from everywhere, there are incredible cliffs (I think they call them craigs), it has dramatic topography (the city is built on seven hills, the castle occupying the highest point), and the architecture is beautiful and illustrative of the city's long history (as are the tiny steep alleys they call closes).

And the entire city smells like hot dogs.

What?!

Seriously, Allie and I were walking around and I kept remarking how good the hot dogs smelled, but of course we didn't see any hot dogs. What the hell could it be?

It's whiskey (yes, there's an "e" in Scotland). Never having tried whiskey, I didn't realize this. It smells like hot dogs. We tasted some whiskey at the castle gift shop. I couldn't handle even a fraction of the thimble-sized sample, but after my throat burned, I tasted hot dogs, er, smoky meat.

And then when we saw a movie (The Holiday, yeah, I know, but it was the only acceptable thing out...they don't watch British movies in Britain! Not even in London! And it was cute.) our last night in Edinburgh, there were ads for Jack Daniels whisky before the movie. Your city smells like whiskey, but you actually want that American stuff?