Will it be the Dom or the Krug? SQ J, EY F, EY Apartments & SQ Suites

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It was now time to bid goodbye to London and make our way to Scotland.

The Virgin lounge at Euston had adequate seating hot drinks snacks and wifi which made our 45 min wait for the train move relatively quickly.

We then boarded our slightly delayed Virgin Trains service to Glasgow.

I had booked some reasonably cheap 1st Class advanced saver tickets, even those these include a seat reservation I would recommend noting your carriage and boarding as soon as you can as the luggage racks fill up fast.

Tea & coffee was served along with complimentary bacon sandwiches for breakfast followed by a "Christmas" turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce sandwich or assorted crisps and pretzel snack boxes for lunch.

Overall 1st Clss is not much of a step up from standard but depending on when you book it can be worthwhile for the extra space (1-2 vs 2-2) I paid an extra 10GBP per ticket.

There is not much scenery on the way on this route until you hit Scotland (even then the Borders are not a patch on the Highlands) as you run through the rather forgotten parts of industrial England for the most part, though for football fans it is entertaining enough to spot a few grounds or match the town to the football team as you head north.

Wembley for instance flew past.

 

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Arriving in Glasgow around 3:30pm we decided to walk to the Doubletree, now let this be a lesson to you. Check the topography before telling your wife it is not far. I had forgotten that Hope Street is a decent sized hill.

After a bit of complaining we got to reception at the Doubltree which was rather busy. I spent my time admiring the newly renovated foyer and noticing that Patrick Thistle (a diddy football club in Scotland) had elected to hold some sort of conference there that day/night. This did not bode well for my upgrade chances checking the app no suites were available for sale and I had been pre-allocated an Exec room 840 from my base queen room booking and this was what I was offered. Late checkout of 3pm was granted with a smile and two warm chocolate chip cookies.

The rooms are recently renovated (I believe it as a total 11m GBP renovation and it shows everything was nicely finished throughout the hotel) the bathrooms are rather small but was more than adequate for our 1 night stay.

Room 840 was the internal part of the U shape so not much a view but this ensured it was very quiet. It was decorated with similar wood finish to the Bankside but on a smaller scale so should not date so quickly IMHO.

We didn't go for drinks in the lounge but reports seem to say it has a decent selection. The lounge is nice with a decent view given the location. We had a cup of tea an IRN BRU and some chocolate the next day before check out.

 

[Major]

Enjoying this very detailed TR

 

[amaroo]

One tip I have is make sure you save room for 2nd dessert (or skip the 1st dessert) so you can have nitrogen ice cream cones with toppings made at your table. This isn't on the menu and is offered after dessert.

Nice TR.

We got the same show in Bangkok the other night.

 

[mel-world]

Excellent TR but is anyone else having trouble viewing the photos? I am using an Android tablet. I can see the one above from Amaroo but only about 25% of the photos from the SponsorSFC posts. I'll have to look on the PC later.

 

[teammongo]

Great trip report. Have very fond memories of Rangali Island..

 

[SponsorSFC]

Excellent TR but is anyone else having trouble viewing the photos? I am using an Android tablet. I can see the one above from Amaroo but only about 25% of the photos from the SponsorSFC posts. I'll have to look on the PC later.

I know this isn't much help but I just checked using my android tablet and can see all the images.

Let me know if you have problems across multiple devices and I can look at specific images to try and work out the problem.

 

[amaroo]

FWIW - all ok on iphone and mac

 

[mel-world]

Excellent TR but is anyone else having trouble viewing the photos? I am using an Android tablet. I can see the one above from Amaroo but only about 25% of the photos from the SponsorSFC posts. I'll have to look on the PC later.

All good on my Windows PC so it must be some limitation on my Tablet and Phone - both Android.

 

[v1nce007]

I know this isn't much help but I just checked using my android tablet and can see all the images.

Let me know if you have problems across multiple devices and I can look at specific images to try and work out the problem.

I can't see a lot of the images using both PC and the iphone app. Just seeing a black box with an "X". Example: all images on post #62

 

[SponsorSFC]

I have tested across a few browsers and the only one that replicated the issue was an old version of Internet Explorer.

Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari (latest iOS) all displayed all images both logged in and not logged in. Unfortunately I think it is a browser issue with imageshack at your end and possibly with the AFF app (I don't use it so can't test it)

Some of the images (especially earlier in the thread) are hosted on photobucket but they are having serious ongoing issues with their upload pages so I have switched to imageshack.

 

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Apologies for the hiatus on this report. Prior to our trip our slightly challenged feline who can easily clear a 6 foot fence decided that it was far to difficult to clear my 12 inch laptop, unfortunately the damaged caused it to fail part way through the trip but now thanks to the Amex Explorer card I am 110,000 points richer with a new laptop in hand.

Enough about my problems and back to the report.

Now as scenic as Glasgow is it was now time for the reason of our trip, it was time to enter Paradise.

Celtic continued their undefeated domestic season with a comfortable victory over Ross County.

The following day we took advantage of a late checkout so my wife stayed in bed while I went back to Celtic Park for the tour.

This is a great tour and I would recommend it for anyone who is in Glasgow.

There are not many football stadiums where you can view a Faberge egg.

Good to see the Australian contingent well represented.

Celtic's new big money signing.

Great to have safe standing back in the UK even if it is only a small area.

 

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We left the Doubletree around 2pm to head to Edinburgh via Train. Upon reflection this was a mistake as it meant we arrived right on standard check in time.

Hogmanay in Edinburgh is much like NYE in Sydney, every man and his dog seem to be there. Arriving at Waverley we decided to skip the 40 odd person queue for a taxi and walk.

When we arrived at the Waldorf Astoria Edinburgh - The Caledonian the reception was an absolute zoo and not way to politely skip the queue we waited until a rather flustered front desk agent checked us in.

Unfortunately check in summed up our stay here. There was no Diamond recognition (not even a thank you for your loyalty, I don't really care but it was a sign of things to come) I was initially told that we would have to change rooms after the first night as I had made 2 reservations with points coming from each of our accounts.

A couple of months prior to our stay I had reached out to the hotel to ensure the reservations were linked so we would not have to change rooms I also enquired about a pre-upgrade to ensure we had a view of the castle. I paid 60GBP for a guaranteed upgrade to a Premium Castle View Room which considering the rates were about 600GBP a night was good value in my opinion.

To say I was not happy with having to move rooms was an understatement. After I expressed my displeasure the front agent managed to arrange it so we would stay in the same room.

We were given a voucher for the wifi and told breakfast would be discounted to 14GBP per person as we were diamonds if we booked now. I declined. There really isn't any point staying here as a guest with status (I understand that this is a brand standard but it still doesn't make sense to me).

The room itself was rather nice if a little tired (there was a large chip in the sink for instance). It was spacious but lacked much wardrobe storage.

The view of the castle was pretty good though

Which would look like this on Hogmany

 

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After Edinburgh it was time to head north to the highlands.

We got the train from Edinburgh to Inverness with a short stop to change trains in Perth. After picking up the hire car we made our way to our Airbnb which would serve as our base for the next few days.

Now this was a very special experience for me we had wanted to visit Fouis Castle as it is the home of Clan Munro but it turns out that the Pavilion at Foulis is available for rent.

The Pavilion is the section where the car is parked, it was extremely comfortable with 2 bedrooms 3 bathrooms, kitchen dining room and living room with a wood fireplace perfect for relaxing with a wee dram.

A real highlight of our stay was the tour of the castle given by Mrs Munro who is now in her 90s she had an absolute abundance of information about the Clan and the castle and some great stories about some of the family characters from history.

 

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Now we couldn't visit the highlands without a visit to Glenmorangie, unfortunately they had not yet started production after the New Year break we were able to organise a complimentary tour of the distillery on the first day they reopened.

Of course no visit would be complete without a visit to the tasting room.

 

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We made our way back to Inverness the long way to stop by Loch Ness but much like my whale shark tour at Rangali there would be no monster spotting today.

Our next stop was the Mecure Inverness.

The hotel had been recently renovated and looked nice enough. The bathrooms were tiny but the real problem was one of the hotel boilers broke down so we only had lukewarm water. Service recovery was rather lacking as well with the only option to be rebooked into another hotel for our 2nd night. As we were off on a full day Speyside tour that day and had an early flight the following day we decided to stick it out.

View from the room.

Inverness was an attractive town and would definitely go back but I would say that Rocpool (not the Fred Perry one) is reason enough to visit. It was the best meal we had eaten so far on our trip easily eclipsing Dinner by Heston at a out 1/4 of the price.

It is just across the bridge on the left hand side in the picture above.

Rocpool Restaurant - Rocpool Restaurant

 

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As it was low season none of the group tours were runnings and many distilleries were closed.

We therefore organised a private driver through Inverness Tours. Our tour guide on the day Laura was fantastic and clearly loved her job we would not hesitate booking a trip with her again.

First stop was the Gordon and McPhail tasting room

This was an amazing store with 4 walls floor to ceiling of whisky.

After suitably whetting our whistles it was time to head out to some distilleries after a quick stop to admire some 'airy coos.

1st stop was Glenfiddich which is in a beautiful location and a very professional operation.

 

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Now this may seem strange but our guide Laura said that we had to make sure we saw the ladies room while we were there and it may seem even stranger but I would second this recommendation.
It was ridiculous with an open fireplace and about half the size of our entire house back home.

 

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Next stop was Macallan where we didn't d the tour but they were really gearing up for world domination they had by far the most storerooms of any distilleries we were visiting and were in the process of constructing more.

Unfortunately they were not hiring in the blending room.

 

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Last stop of the day was Glen Moray which was much more modern with stainless steel everywhere compared to the wood backwash and mash tuns at the others.

Interestingly we were allowed to take photos in the storehouse here, the other distilleries had banned photography due to risk of explosion.