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November 23rd, 2019

Day 2: The Small Towns of the English Countryside

Today, we woke up way later than we were alarmed to wake up. All the blame goes to jet-lag. It was really bad and we were really tired. But we eventually made it out of bed and packed to head out. We briefly met Kristen, Rufus’ wife, and she was really nice and warm and welcoming. We chatted for a little bit before walking out to explore the Abbey House Gardens located right at our doorstep.

Because it was off-season, we had the whole garden and surrounding nature to ourselves. It was quite nice to walk around the garden and explore while uninterrupted and without a single soul around. The skies at this point in the day were heavily cloudy and with some sprinkles here and there but bearable. We walked through the somewhat manicured garden (it was off-season so Rufus was working on cleaning and managing the garden) and explored the different areas of the garden before slowly making our way down the slopes of the five acre property to the natural forested area near the stream below. We walked along the stream and eventually crossed over a little walk-bridge to the other side to check it out briefly before making our way back up to the house.

With a little bit of time left before our scheduled departure from Malmesbury, Cynthia and I walked into town for a bit and checked out some of the shops that we walked by last night. There were loads of boutique shops along the main road that we glanced at and walked into before turning back. We then visited Malmesbury Abbey which was a big church now turned bookstore (among other things). We hung out in the abbey bookstore for a few minutes before finally heading out of Malmesbury and toward our next destination: Bourton-on-the-River, the famous, picturesque village in The Cotswolds.

It was short-ish drive to get to Bourton-on-the-Water compared to last night’s drive. When we finally arrived, it was only slightly drizzling here and there and parking was easy, lucky enough for us. With the raindrops falling, we roamed around this beautiful, quaint village in The Cotswolds and walked through the small, picturesque streets and alleyways as the daylight slowly dimmed and became eveninglight. We peeked our heads into a couple of small shops here and there while walking along the little river running through the middle of the village. By the time we had exhausted much of the area, it was dark and we were hungry. It was finally food time! Our first real meal of England! Luckily, we didn’t have to spend much time finding a place since Cynthia had already picked out a great Italian restaurant called L’Anatra located near village center for dinner.

The restaurant was cozy and was part of a bigger hotel. There was both a lounge area for drinks as well as a restaurant area for food and drinks. After sifting through the menu, we were finally ready to place an order with our attractive-English-accented waitress. We ordered Diavola Pizza and Braised Slow Cooked Beef with Mashed Potatoes and Vegetables. So delicious! We chowed almost everything down but since there was so much food, we kept some pizza for the road, just in case we got hungry. It was a great dinner at a restaurant with a great, warm atmosphere in a picturesque, rainy village in countryside England.

The rain outside had picked up by the time we were done with dinner. So instead of the original plans to see a place Cynthia had in mind, we drove straight to Blenheim Palace which was a bit of a ways away. The roads were dark and rainy, making the drive itself a little more hazardous of a journey. But we made it to town and parked before enduring a rainy walk all the way into the palace area where the Christmas market we were intending on visiting was located. The festivities at the palace were pretty small. Most people in the area had come for the Christmas lights attraction, a ticketed event that we did not pay for. Instead, we window shopped around the market in the rain for an hour or so before calling it a night and driving all the way to the night’s lodging at Tollgate Inn, located around the Bath area.

After devouring the leftover pizza from dinner and warming up for a bit, we finally called it a night knowing that we had a busy day ahead in Bath. I’m excited to see what Bath is like after hearing from Cynthia and my brother Minh about their experiences long ago.

5 Things I Learned Today:

1. Malmesbury is the oldest town in England.

2. Malmesbury Abbey is a multipurpose abbey. Once a place for worshiping (maybe it still is…?), the abbey currently serves as a makeshift religious bookstore. In the past and on some of the media posted in the church, it looks like the abbey has also served as a skate park at some point too.

3. That English accent though. Mui attractive hahaha. I never noticed how attractive that accent was until hearing it constantly the last couple of days.

4. England is all about those roundabouts. Roundabouts galore! They’re everywhere! Small roads. Big roads. Long highway roads from place to place. They all have roundabouts. And they come in all sizes. Small, medium, large. It takes some getting used to since everything else is on the opposite side, making normally-difficult-to-understand-for-laypeople roundabouts even harder to maneuver through.

5. English Christmas pudding is like a fruit loaf and different than our actual American pudding. It’s more like bread with dried fruit in it than something made of dairy and milk and custard-like like the pudding Americans are used to.

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