  We present an experimental demonstration of a bright and high fidelity
polarization entangled photon pair source. The source is constructed using two
critically phase matched $\beta$-Barium Borate crystals with parallel optical
axes and photon pairs are collected after filtering with a circular field-stop.
Near unity fidelities are obtained with detected pair rates exceeding
\SI{100000}{pairs/\s/\mW} approaching the brightness of practical quasi-phase
matched entangled photon sources. We find that the brightness scales linearly
with the crystal length. We present models supporting the experimental data and
propose strategies for further improvement. The source design is a promising
candidate for emerging quantum applications outside of laboratory environments.
