The Cotswolds

After celebrating the wedding of our good friends Esther & Todd, we said our goodbyes, loaded up the car, and pointed it out of the city and into the English countryside. The farther we got from the wedding weekend, the more the roads narrowed and the hedgerows closed in, until we were winding through the kind of golden-stone villages that look almost too perfect to be real. First stop: Lacock, a National Trust village that time seems to have mostly skipped over.

Lacock Abbey itself is the real draw, an 800-year-old former nunnery whose vaulted stone cloisters were used as filming locations throughout the Harry Potter series. Walking those same corridors, it wasn't hard to feel like we'd wandered straight onto the Hogwarts set. What really made it special, though, was how quiet it was. We had the cloisters almost entirely to ourselves, just one or two other visitors drifting through in the distance, and the light spilling in through the tracery windows onto the empty stone floor made it feel less like a tourist attraction and more like we'd stumbled onto something private.

We booked The Rectory in Crudwell months ahead, mostly because of how idyllic it looked in photos, and it did not disappoint in person. The hotel is a Georgian former rectory dating back to around 1780, built with enough bedrooms to house the resident rector's fourteen children, tucked behind the village church and wrapped in four acres of gardens. The honey-colored Cotswold stone, the walled grounds, even the centuries-old dovecote out back, all of it felt like exactly the kind of place we'd hoped to find for the rest of the trip.

The restaurant turned out to be the real highlight of our stay. Over two nights we had two breakfasts and a dinner there, and every single meal was outstanding, easily some of the best food of the whole trip. It was the kind of place that made us linger at the table a little longer than planned, in no hurry to go anywhere else.

The next two days were spent wandering between villages that all seemed to be competing for the title of "most beautiful in England," starting with Bibury. With only one small main street with a small stream that ran through the town, it was a nice introduction to the post cards towns we'd be visiting during this trip.

Stow-on-the-Wold was next, home to the church door everyone's seen a hundred times without knowing its name. Supposedly the same door that inspired Tolkien's Doors of Durin. Wandering the streets beyond allowed us to take in the idyllic English town at our own pace and capture scenes that we don't run across in the US.

Then there was Castle Combe which was the prettiest of the bunch. I loved how much of the town was covered in greenery. A real english garden come to life. Just be prepared to park a mile away and walk down to the town as it gets very busy with tourists during peak season.

We were lucky enough to have a proper English pub sitting directly across the street from The Rectory. The Potting Shed was exactly what we wanted after a day out, low ceilings, warm light, and a menu that took familiar pub standards and gave them a little more care. Between the Scotch egg, fish and chips, and everything else that landed on the table, it was elevated English fare without losing what made it comforting in the first place. We loved every bite. Who said the English didn't have good food?

Yvonne has always loved English gardens, so Sezincote felt like it was made for her. The grounds had everything she loves about them, layered planting, winding paths, water lilies, and little architectural surprises tucked into the greenery, with Sezincote's Indian influence giving the whole place a personality unlike anywhere else we visited. We took our time wandering through it, stopping every few steps for another photo, before settling into the café for tea and cakes with a view back toward the house and gardens. It was a pretty perfect way to spend an afternoon.

Bath felt like the perfect final stop after our time in the Cotswolds. Grand Georgian terraces curved around green squares, and nearly every street seemed filled with enough period detail to make an ordinary walk feel like stepping into another century. We stayed at The Queensberry Hotel, a characterful Georgian townhouse tucked away on Russell Street, close enough to walk everywhere, but just removed enough from the busiest parts of the city. From there, we spent our time wandering without much of a plan, letting the architecture and quiet side streets guide us from one photo to the next.

Unfortunately, our stay also included what was probably the only disappointing meal of the entire trip. The Olive Tree Restaurant was located downstairs at our hotel and seemed like an obvious choice for dinner. Maybe our expectations were simply too high, but the meal never quite came together for us. Nothing was necessarily bad; it was just surprisingly forgettable compared with the relaxed and memorable meals we had enjoyed everywhere else, which was especially unexpected given its Michelin star.

The next morning, with a few hours to spare before lunch and the drive back to Heathrow, we decided the best way to see more of Bath was on foot. What started as a casual walk turned into a 3.8-mile loop through the city and up into the hills above it. The climb gave us a completely different view of Bath, with the streets and rooftops unfolding below as the countryside closed in around the edges. By the time we made our way back down, we had covered more of the city than expected, and somehow managed to fit it all in before lunch and the long drive to Heathrow for our flight home.

Our time in the Cotswolds ended up exceeding every expectation we had going in. Between the quiet abbey corridors, storybook villages, our countryside hotel, and long walks through Bath, the trip felt relaxed without ever feeling empty. Even the drive back to Heathrow couldn't quite break the spell. We made one final stop at Greggs for a sausage roll before hopping on our flight home, a very unceremonious but appropriately British ending to a few days we'd happily do all over again.