ubiquitous's Qype profile

Really I couldn't fail to give the place 5 stars since I was lucky enough to attend a free tasting there the other evening run by the highly knowledgeable and personable Mark who also happens to be shop manager. He's a really extensive knowledge and makes his tastings interesting. I believe we were at a beginners event and he is happy to tailor events to suit his audience.

Cadenhead's is Scotland's oldest independent bottler and although they do sell standard bottlings, their own bottlings are exclusive - straight from the cask, no colourings, filtering or dilution which are all treatments which the normal branded bottlings are subjected to.

It's a fascinating place to visit and Mark is keen to find a whisky appropriate to your taste. A great place to buy exclusive gifts with a huge range of exclusive bottlings. you can make high quality pricey whiskys affordable by buying in smaller volume bottles direct from the casks in the shop, I think 330ml and 500ml. Also a great place to take foreign guests to.

I spent a lovely time in this shop when I visited N. Cyprus maybe 10 years ago. However I have it on good authority from someone's blog in 2008 that the place is still there and still a great place for lovely Turkish rugs.

Of course half the enjoyment of a purchase at this kind of place is the chat and the bargaining. The shop keeper is a lovely man and serves potential customers with - well was it mint tea or turkish coffee... I can't quite remember now. However much was talked about and I finally came away with a lovely bag which I've turned into a floor cushion.

The owner - presumably a Mr Gordes - handed me some cards asking my to tell my friends about his store. Now this is the first opportunity I've had. If you do get the chance to go there visit and send best wishes to him from a friend in Edinburgh!

The address format is slightly dodgy by the way - I think Mersin 10 comes after Girne - I guess it has to do with the whole Turkish/Greek thing that this site didn't find Girne in Turkey which I suspect will technically be the right postal address. Maybe Mersin 10 means N. Cyprus in Turkish...

This store has really improved in the last few years. The information point is now very useful and the staff really helpful.

As well as some good houseplants there's also a range of plants and equipment in the garden centre part of the shop. They give away old potting trays etc. periodically so it's always worth taking a look if you want that kind of thing.

The pricing of some items can be a real bargain, but as with all supermarket type places it pays to know what things usually cost as some items can also be well above what you need to spend.

A great new addition is the 2nd hand charity bookshelves/book recycling area they have just after the checkouts. Here you can leave your unwanted/spare books (if in fair condition) or pick out books to take away. You put in a donation for the charity (It's labelled which one - I can't remember right now!) - it was 50p for paperback of £1 for hardback - or of course more if you'd like to :)

Great! I requested a separate entry for the reference library as I wanted to tell folks just how useful it is for researching things. Apart from the normal hard copy items including a wide range of magazines in various fields, they also have some online research facilities such as mintel, various newspaper searches etc.

The facility I find most handy is “Which” online this is the consumers organisation that reviews all sorts of consumer goods for various aspects of performance and price and so helps you to not only avoid buying a dud fridge or washing machine, but get a really decent one at a fair price!

It's also apparently a pretty good quiet place to study and has general internet access although you may have to queue at busy times to use that.

So, thanks to the folks from qype admin who have now kindly put up an entry for the reference library separate from that of the lending library at the central library.

This place is highly rated by the locals as a restaurant for special occassions. It has it's own vinyard and also runs a hotel which according to the French review here is good with generously proportioned rooms and discrete staff.
The visitors restaurant offers a fixed price menu which was 42 Euro last time I went - but they've a good website with all the info you need in English as far as I can recollect.

DON'T come here if you're vegetarian or vegan!!!

I cycled over for Sunday lunch with a friend in pleasant November sunshine and cycled home in rather wet weather, but we hardly noticed our surroundings by that time... our return journery has become part of an epic folklore tale of circuitous nature which I will refrain from detailing.

Back to the restaurant - the meal starts with aperatif, then a choice of starter (fois gras featuring a number of times), followed by an interim course, then the main dish, then cheese, then desert, then digestif, accompanied (between 2 of us, I don't know what happens if you're on your own...) by a bottle of their own white, rose and red wine. My friend had one of the fois gras choices for starters and it was so generous a portion that I had a fair bit too, I chose scallops, then he had snails (the sauce apparently was a meal on it's own with sausage and all sorts) and I had langustines, after which we felt exceedingly full and where rather relieved that the suckling pig we'd decided on for the main course was not too enormous a serving. The cheeses were all local goat cheeses, but since I love these that was no problem and somehow we ate them all (I think we impressed the restaurant staff at this point). I confess I don't remember too much about desert - mine was something to do with chocolate. The white wine had a great nose, not quite so good on the palate, but still... neither of us thought to much to the rose which we largely ingnored, but the red was very drinkable. Between the wines, the aperatif and the digestif it's small wonder that the bike ride home was, well, meandering, but thankfully there was almost no other traffic on the road and we made it home just before darkness.

If you do get the opportunity to visit, either book a room in the hotel or make sure you have a safe route back to your lodgings which doesn't involve driving.

If I have got the right place, this is a very friendly small resaurant serving vegetarian, vegan and organic food. Quite a contrast to the duck and fois gras dominated menus of the region. A most interesting alternative to more traditional French fayre.

C'est tres sympa et bien utile pour imprimer les cartes d'embarquements!

I found the folks in this branch on Forrest Rd. very helpful.

The place is particularly usefull for picking up DVD media, their dual layer DVD (i.e. 8.5Gb capacity) were priced competitively with amazon when I looked - very impressive.

Weel worth lookin for your computing needs and presumably they know what they're talking about in terms of fixing things too.

A very creative and fun place and even more inspiring if you get to meet the founder - which I was lucky enough to do when I was on the Prince's Scottich Youth Business Trust grant/loan board when her startup application was being considered. Her energy and enthusiasm was infectious and there was absolutely no hesitation in approving her startup finance.

I think it's now over 10 years later and I'm massively impressed.

Just take a look at the gallery and you'll want to go :)

http://www.doodlesscotland.co.uk/gallery/