So what’s a whiskey-hater doing with her nose in whiskey glasses?

Like most things in my life lately, it wasn’t planned. While we wait for the ship to finish its maintenance, the cruise company organized some tours for us, and asked us to select our first and second choices. I selected a nature tour as my first choice. I was so sure I would get my first choice, I barely looked at the description when I checked off my second choice. All I noticed was that it was a city tour.

As luck would have it, not enough people signed up for my first choice, so it was cancelled, and I ended up with my second choice. And while it was indeed a city tour, it wasn’t of the city we were in (Belfast) It was across the border in Dublin, Ireland, and the main event was a whiskey tasting at a distillery. I only realized what I’d done when I boarded the tour bus and heard everybody talking about whiskey.

That’s how someone who is a liquor lightweight ended up sipping fine Irish whiskey for breakfast early one morning. “Sipping” might be an exaggeration; it was more like I wet my lips, just enough to confirm that all the samplers tasted like acid to me, the way whiskey always has. The distillery tour was quite interesting though; I learned a lot about the process. And that I still haven’t developed a taste for whiskey.