During the second half of the English portion of our vacation (view Part I: London here), we traveled to the towns of Bournemouth, Winchester and Oxford.  Bournemouth is the hometown of our friend Andy, whom we vacationed with.  It was a lot of fun to be there with a local Brit who knew the area… and how to drive on the other side of the road!  Unfortunately I came down with a pretty bad cold while we were in Oxford but one afternoon spent reading the Hunger Games helped clear me up ;)  And although I had visited London once before, this was my first time in the English countryside and I looooved it.  I would definitely recommend Oxford to anyone headed to England (although most of the themed tours – Harry Potter, J.R.R. Tolkien, etc – were only available on the weekend, so I would say to schedule your trip accordingly) and since we only stopped in Winchester for an afternoon, I would love to go back there for a few days and explore it a bit more.

This part of the trip included exploring smaller towns and churches – beautiful, old churches that are like nothing we have in the States.  And of course, more amazing food to eat!  Mr. Lemon and I fell in love with the traditional English breakfast at our B&Bs – bacon, sausage, eggs, toast, beans, hash browns and a tomato.  YUM.  We stopped at Jamie Oliver’s Italian restaurant in Oxford for dinner and I not only fell in love with the food, but the decor in the restaurant was simply gorgeous.  The dim lights didn’t allow me to get any good photos but it is serving as inspiration for redecorating our dining room!

So that’s the England half of our trip!  The South of France and Paris yet to come…