The Team Vicino London Adventure: June 2011

When Laura and John came to visit, we decided to visit Vinopolis, the wine museum here in London (among many other fun things we did). After Megan happened upon it while she was here, we knew we had to give it a try.

The way it works is that you attend a quick wine class, where they teach you how to "experience" wine. Then, you walk through multiple rooms where you use little tickets to taste different wines. They have wines divided by region: Europe, "The New World" (Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa - gotta love the remnants of colonialism), and The Americas. We had some great wines from all over the world, Laura and I rode a fake vespa (see below), and I discovered my ability to detect scents in white wines (but not so much in reds). Who knew white wine could smell like green peppers?

I highly recommend this as a fun thing to do if you're near the Tate Modern in London. Also, next time you see Derek, ask him to show you his wine tasting face/noises...

I did the math earlier today, and between work, business/personal travel, and a revolving door of visitors (not to mention a little thing called a Stanley Cup Championship!)....we've had negative seven hours to spend blogging. Apologies! So here's a quick one on our recent weekend trip to Edinburgh, Scotland.

Edinburgh wasn't exactly on our short list of "must go to" places when we were analyzing our potential trips.....but Kristen and I both agreed, we were very impressed with Scotland's capital city.

We stayed in a hotel right in the heart of the small, very walkable city, which worked out quite well. Admittedly, I can't say I knew much about the city, but after visiting Wikipedia (the website of all things true), we game planned a great weekend which included museums, hiking up a small mountain to the city's main castle, visiting ruins and taking part in an awesome scotch tasting tour.

Kristen, who's heritage includes pretty much every Northern European country there is, was also able to pick up a souvenir with her family tartan....sadly, the same store could not find Vicino in their historical records.

Anyways, here are a few pics from our trip:

We hiked up a dormant volcano to reach this massive castle, which was used for thousands of years to protect the city from invaders (usually the English).