We have been doing a lot of walking and it has started to take a toll on our feet. Chris had a blister which had become infected and when he woke up this morning his whole foot was swollen and infected. Being a Sunday, there weren’t a whole lot of options open to us so we jumped into a taxi and took him to the A and E at Whittington hospital. Apparently no one pays for medical treatment in England and that includes unfortunate tourists, but the hospital looked like something out of a modern Charles Dickens novel with outside peeling off and a minimum 6 hour wait for medical treatment. (Not unlike an Australian public hospital actually). We were advised to find an out of hours GP, so Chris rang a service and was given an appointment at another public hospital around lunch time. The taxi ride to the second hospital took us through a few London suburbs and I was struck by how depressing some of them were with tall, dark, ugly brick buildings piled next to each other and unkempt, uncared for gardens (where residents were lucky to have one). But then you’d stumble across the most beautiful park and realise that London residents have access to some great public, community spaces ( as well as free public health care). At the second hospital we ever seen early by a lovely doctor who nearly yelped when he saw Chris’ foot ( and refused to touch it!). He advised him that it was very lucky we hadn’t waited any longer for treatment, prescribed two different super strength antibiotics (to cover the two most likely strains for infection) and warned him that if it got any worse we needed to return to the hospital tomorrow for intravenous antibiotics! Yikes!!!!
We returned home, via two different pharmacies and put Chris’s foot up. It was effectively my last chance to see London, so I grabbed Michael (Nick was fed up with sight seeing), took a tube into Waterloo and went for a stroll along the river with 2 million other people. It was incredibly vibrant along the riverside with different types of buskers every few steps, ice cream vans everywhere (yes Michael got another ice cream) and crowds! I was feeling quite frustrated about London – I’ve read so much about the history, there was so much I wanted to understand and look at, but so far I felt I had just seen the outside of a few places and felt really unsatisfied. Michael and I hopped onto a boat with very low expectations, but we found a couple of seats up the top and at the front, where we got a great view, and discovered there was a commentary (yah!!!!!!). As we cruised down the river our very helpful guide explained all the buildings and monuments along the river side and their origin. It wasn’t as much detail as I wanted, but for an hour long cruise it was great – we saw Cleopatras Needle, Wren’s Steps, Ladies Bridge and my favourite Tower Bridge.
When we returned home, Chris reported that his foot might be feeling a little bit better. Fingers crossed.
