We have to confess that we don't come to Edinburgh just for the history and the architecture.  It's also a pilgrimage to our favorite whisky shop, Cadenhead's. They sell pure scotch whisky, spirits straight out of untouched casks they buy from famous distillers with no filtering, no coloring, no dilution.  (Cask strength is typically between 54% and 58% alcohol as opposed to 40% to 43% in most U.S. branded whiskies.) Our last day in Edinburgh was Sunday and according to the sign on the door they had opening hours on Sunday but noted that we should call ahead.  It was a beautiful weekend so we thought, well  of course they'd be open. 

Of course we were wrong.  We got to the doors on Sunday afternoon and found everything locked up tight.  How could they do this?  We came all the way from KANSAS to shop there!  Well, so be it, we said, we'd had a good holiday anyway... and we promised not to let one mishap spoil our trip.

But as we walked back up the Royal Mile we kept our eyes open. We asked in one shop about single-cask whisky and they pointed us to a bottle of something expensive with a familiar brand name -  but upon examination it was just regular single malt and we're sure they knew it.  We walked out.

Further along we chanced upon a store front called "Royal Mile Whiskies" and saw the magic words "cask strength" on a shelf iside ... and they were having a sale!  These were not the same as a true single-cask whisky, but they were single-malt, unfiltered and undiluted... just with a little blending from other casks from the same distillery.  Quite good enough. We had a happy visit there, comparing labels and tasting a little. In the end we bought four bottles of the sort of really good stuff you can't get at home. 

Later we added to our cache some surprisingly good buys at Duty-Free in the Edinburgh airport.  When we got to Newark Ron had to stuff these into his camera bag, wrapped in our spare sweaters, and check it because of the TSA's senseless ban on liquids in carry-ons when applied with typical bureaucratic enthusiasm to duty-free packages.

Fortunately the bottles arrived safely in Kansas with only the boxes a little dented. Then, less than a week later, the box from Royal Mile Whiskies also arrived safely. We had opted to ship rather than carry  and shipping wasn't all that expensive because we saved the 17.5% VAT because the bottles were shipped directly out of the UK.

We'll certainly pay more attention to Cadenhead's business hours on our next visit, but Royal Mile Whiskies was a great find for future shopping and we came home happy. You can visit Cadenhead's at http://edinburgh.wmcadenhead.com/ and Royal Mile at www.royalmilewhiskies.co.uk/.