I'm Dreaming of a White Easter, Huh?

For Easter weekend, the Brits give both Good Friday and Easter Monday as holidays. We decided we should get out of town and see some English countryside. We've heard the Cotswolds are lovely so off we went.

Our first stop: Oxford. We didn't have much time as it was nearly lunch and Owen needs to be fed promptly. We wandered over to Christ Church College, where they filmed the Hogwarts dining hall scenes in the Harry Potter films. I assume some educatin' goes on there as well. It was extremely beautiful and frigidly cold. So, off we went to for some bangers. This turned out to be a culinary theme for the week.

Then we set off for our rented cottage in the charming village of Woodstock. We were a quick walk away from Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill. We immediately set out to tour the grounds and it was beautiful, but still cold. There were the requisite geese and sheep, of course. Margot and Owen had a blast mucking about.

On Saturday, we tried to tour the interior of the palace. With two toddlers, this is not easy. We couldn't bring the buggy so we had to let them walk. This was fairly disastrous as they ran in opposite directions, trying to touch priceless knick-knacks. We departed. There were some children's activities in the "Pleasure Gardens" so we thought we might do better there. We missed the little choo-choo train so decided to walk. It suddenly started to hail. The kids were covered in the buggy, but I was pelted with golf-ball-sized hail and blown about in with gale-force winds. (Andy was moving the car.) We finally made it. Needless to say, we decided against the Easter Egg hunt in the blizzard. Margot had her face painted and Owen ate more sausages. They had a Punch and Judy show which Margot enjoyed immensely. Owen kept trying to reveal the puppeteer like the Wizard of Oz. He had to be removed.

Sunday was Easter, of course. We had a fabulous Easter egg hunt in our cottage. Margot can sniff out chocolate anywhere. Owen was just having fun running around. The famous Bear Hotel was our choice for Easter Brunch; a bit fancy for kiddies but a fabulous, homey meal. There were blizzards all morning. That afternoon, we packed the kiddies in the car to see a little more countryside. We visited two beautiful towns: Bourton-on-Water and Stow-on-the-Wold. Both have been bitten by the tourist bug but were lovely nonetheless.

We had a great visit to the Cotswolds and got a little taste of the countryside. We hope to do more.

Here are some photos.