With yet another later wake-up call, we got ready, checked out of our hotel, and made our way to pick up our rental care. The directions advised to get off at Hyde Park station and walk about .6 miles. It was a nice walk through quiet Hyde Park, but little did we know until we arrived we should have taken the Tube to Marble Arches stop and there would not have been quite the walk. It took us to an entrance that was about another 10-minute walk through the underground parking deck to find the Enterprise office. The good news was this seemed to be the Hyde Park exclusive car parking garage. We walked past the fanciest of fancy BMWs, Mercedes, and Rolls Royce. This garage has no shortage of expensive cars.
Nick did try to convince me this was our rental…
While checking in we realized our rental was a manual, thankfully we agreed we could have the car back on Friday by an earlier time so we were able to upgrade to an automatic, which I believe will allow both of us to arrive back with a lot less gray hairs. We rented the cutest Nissan SUV, an X Trail, which we don’t have in the US.
Navigating through the bustling streets of London, off we headed to Oxford University. The trip was only 1.5 hours but it felt like it took forever for us to get there with all the traffic and stops outside of the city.
On the way, I looked up places to eat and was very pleased with a cafe in the bottom of the church in campus. While it was packed and you had to cozy up to the people next to you, our food was great. I had read that it tends to be touristy but I found it to be a good mix of students/professors and tourists. It had the cutest garden that I would have loved to sit in, but unfortunately, the drizzle prevented that.
After our bite to eat, we made our way over to the famous Bodelin library, which was only accessible via tour, so we entered the more modern library which had a few exhibits currently. Of course, Nick thoroughly enjoyed it as they were centered around books. We saw the oldest manuscript of The Canterbury Tales.
We finished our time in Oxford by walking through little shops and grabbing a coffee as we made our way back to the car park. We dipped into what appeared to be a picturesque courtyard, All Souls College where we were quickly greeted with a sign that said if we were looking for Harry Potter to please turn around. This is not where you would find him – lol. Needless to say, we weren’t Chasing Harry today, but if we were I guess that was NOT where to find him. I was surprised by the business of Oxford, there were a lot of other tourists in addition to the students. We certainly didn’t even hit everything that we could have seen, but with the weather, I was ready to head to our next destination.
Heading out to The Cotswolds proved to be a much longer drive than we anticipated, I guess thinking back it took as long as it said but again we were in a lot of stop-and-go traffic, which was surprising. We safely arrive at the New Inn at Coln. I entered to see a sign that pointed one way to the Locals’ Bar and the other way to The Restaraunt. Confused about where to check in, I was quickly greeted by a girl lighting a stone fireplace within the bar. Needless to say, the check-in for the Inn was in the bar. They quickly showed us to our room upstairs, which is the cutest little room I’ve ever seen. It sure beats that shoebox at the Hilton, and is much cheaper! Having dinner reservations in about 30 minutes, we decided to stretch our legs first by exploring the “town”. It took a whole whopping 10 minutes, as it consisted of a community store (which was already closed) and a church. We visited the church, it was a little eery being the only ones, but we followed the instructions on the wall and turned the lights on and off before we left.
Dinner was served in the bottom of the Inn, we each enjoyed a local pint (or two in Nick’s case), and started with tomato toast with Iberico ham and a lamb croquette. Nick had the chicken sandwich with salad for his main, and I had the burger with rosemary salt fries. Full, our super sweet waitress tempted us with the pudding menu and I am glad that she did. We shared the warm Guinness cake with ice cream and it did not disappoint!
