Learning About Florence Nightingale and a Final London Stroll

Well, this is it. The end of my time in London on this trip, and the end of this trip.

My flight doesn’t leave until after five in the afternoon, so I had some time left in London. I filled it by visiting the Florence Nightingale Museum, walking through a graffiti tunnel, and taking a last stroll.

Because of this post’s position in this trip, a summary of my time in London, and another one of the whole trip, will magically sprout at the end of the other prose.

Florence Nightingale Museum

I think I first heard the name Florence Nightingale as a young child. I believe, although I don’t recall, that I knew from the beginning that she was a real person. Nevertheless, the name always had a fairy-tale quality for me.

The small Florence Nightingale Museum provides information about her early years, her journey into nursing, some of the innovations she introduced into military nursing, and her own health. There’s also a small section on military nursing in general, from centuries ago up to as modern times as the early years of COVID.

Artifacts include some of her notebooks and scrapbooks, some of her furniture and furnishings, and multiple editions, including some foreign translations, of Florence Nightingale’s seminal book, “Notes on Nursing.” The book was bought and read by more than just nurses. Ordinary people also bought it to help care for sick people at home when they couldn’t afford private nursing.

I learned a few facts about Florence Nightingale that I didn’t know before or didn’t remember.

I always accurately associated Florence Nightingale with British nursing. However, she wasn’t born in Britain. She was named after her birthplace, Florence, Italy. She was born into a rich family and had influential friends and acquaintances.

She liked pets. Florence Nightingale kept a bad-tempered owl as a pet. Athena. She rescued it from the Acropolis in Athens when it was an owlet. It became her constant companion. It died on her way to Turkey during the Crimean War. Florence Nightingale was quite broken up about that.

She, Florence Nightingale, not the owl, was interested in the sciences, including statistics, from an early age, but her parents forbade her to study and enter nursing even into her twenties. They felt nursing was a pursuit for working-class women, not women from moneyed-class families, such as theirs.

But Florence Nightingale became convinced that God called her to study science and become a nurse. She believed that studying statistics would help her understand the patterns God was creating. Um, okay. No comment.

(As a testament to her fairytale-like presence in my mind, I find it next to impossible to call her just “Florence” or “Nightingale.” It’s always Florence Nightingale for me.)

Florence Nightingale gained nursing prominence when she volunteered to nurse the soldiers in Crimea during the Crimean War. She became severely ill there. She did recover somewhat, but never fully. In her latter years, she required a wheelchair.

After her death, some people contended that her acclaim wasn’t entirely deserved, that some of the military nursing practice innovations she claimed credit for were actually the inventions of others. I don’t know if that contention has ever been proven.

Be that as it may, I think it’s clear that Florence Nightingale was a genuinely dedicated, diligent, caring, and just plain good person. The world could use more of those.

Graffiti Tunnel

On the way from the train station to my hotel when I arrived in London, Google Maps steered me through a graffiti-filled tunnel. It gets some minor mention as a sight to see. Not surprisingly, it’s known as “The Graffiti Tunnel.”

When I walked through it, I was dragging my luggage and focused on getting to my hotel. Consequently, I didn’t pause or even slow down to take a look or snap some pictures.

I headed there after leaving the Florence Nightingale Museum.

The graffiti fills the walls and ceiling of the roughly one-block-long tunnel and a shorter cross-tunnel. A little bit of it is, to my eyes, simply uninspired and uninspiring tags. But much of it is vibrant modern art.

Some of the graffiti is to my liking; some is not. Art is like that, isn’t it?

Graffiti in The Graffiti Tunnel:

London Stroll

After leaving the tunnel, I took a short, less purposeful stroll through that section of London. I ended up walking along the bank of the Thames back to my hotel, including walking on a short pedestrian pier jutting out into the Thames.

London truly is an august city, even in October.

London Summary

This was my fourth visit to London in my life. I chose it for this trip primarily because of Heathrow Airport. No, I don’t have a touristic fascination with Heathrow, or any airport for that matter.

The defining objective of this trip was to visit a Dear Relative (DR) in Edinburgh. The overnight flight from Toronto (my home) to Edinburgh leaves at a convenient time. But the return trip leaves earlier in the morning than I prefer.

But Air Canada runs a few flights a day between Toronto and London, including a couple that leave London at a decent hour. So London made for a good end point for this journey.

Because I’d been to London before and seen most of the touted “must-see” sights, I decided to set an objective of seeing some of the more quirky and/or less publicly acclaimed sights.

I had some success in that. For example, the Garden Museum and Jewel Tower were interesting. But I also saw some of the more conventional, often-mentioned sights that I hadn’t seen before, such as the Natural History Museum, the V&A, and the London Zoo.

Ever since my first visit, I’ve been taken with London. But I keep forgetting just how very diverse, attractive, and interesting the city is. I spent four days here this trip. I imagine that there is a duration after which London would become boring. But I can’t imagine how long that would have to be. A very long time, I expect.

Trip Summary

Another trip bites the dust. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world. As long as I don’t read the news daily. Or ever. Sigh.

With this UK trip drawing to a close, it’s time for a summary of my journey.

Edinburgh

The trip started with a week in Edinburgh, Scotland, where, as I mentioned in my London summary above, I visited DR. Edinburgh is a beautiful, wonderful, historic city. It makes for a terrific tourist destination even without DR there.

Because my primary purpose for being in Edinburgh was to visit DR, not tourism, I have no more words about it for you here. You can find a few other of my posts about Edinburgh by clicking, or tapping as the case may be, here. 

Leeds

I chose to visit Leeds, England, after Edinburgh primarily to break up what would otherwise have been a long train ride that likely would have required a connection in Leeds anyway.

I’d like to say it’s a city no tourist should miss. I can’t say that, at least for me. But it’s a pleasant, walkable city with a few interesting sights. While I can’t rave about it, I’m not disappointed I went there.

I stayed in Leeds for two and a half days, i.e. three nights. That was about the right amount of time for me. 

Bristol

I loved Bristol. Absolutely loved Bristol. Although much of that adoration is due to it being close to Bath.

Bath’s Abbey is breathtaking. And the Roman baths are spectacular. But more than that, the more modern, but still old by most New World standards, buildings that line the streets are clean and handsome. The streets that they line have little traffic, and some are pedestrianized.

But Bristol is no slouch, either. It has some interesting attractions, a few pleasant streets, nice parks, and attractive waterways.

Despite preferring Bath, using Bristol as a base made sense. It’s a bigger city with trains to more places. I got a direct train there from Leeds and another to my next destination, Salisbury. Had I stayed in Bath, getting trains at decent times would have required connections in Bristol.

And there are a few trains each hour between Bristol and Bath. Depending on whether the train you catch makes stops, the jaunt takes from less than ten minutes to a little over fifteen. My hotel was a relatively short walk to the Bristol train station. It took me less time to get from my hotel to the star attractions in Bath than, in some other larger cities, I’ve required to get from my hotels in those cities to some sights within them. 

I spent four and a half days (five nights) in Bristol, with two day trips to Bath. I don’t think I would have gotten bored with one or two more days in either city, or each of them.

Salisbury

Salisbury was a very pleasant surprise. I went there because it’s the closest city to the globally iconic, somewhat perplexing Stonehenge, which I’d never seen before in person.

I made it to Stonehenge, and it was terrific to punch that ticket, but Salisbury’s cathedral was breathtaking. I knew Salisbury had a cathedral, but I didn’t know it was so spectacular. And it has one of the only four remaining originals of the Magna Carta, the embryo document of Western civil rights.

What’s more, Salisbury has quaint streets, a lovely part of one of Britain’s Rivers Avon, pleasant parks, and interesting little attractions. My three nights, two and a half days there could have benefited from being augmented by another day or two.

London

And that brought me to London, where I’ll soon catch my flight back home. Unless you skipped it, which would have been totally your fault, you read my London summary for this trip above. All that’s left for me to say is, so long until next time.