My first stop in Edinburgh was actually the Western General Hospital. The shuttle dropped Annie and me there on the way to the hostel, because she was very sick that day.

And let me tell you, I was NOT impressed with the NHS at first. The first thing the (brusque) receptionist did was send us into a little side room to call a hotline. Why? Because we could not make an appointment with reception ourselves. Rather, we had to call the hotline, so that the operator could make the appointment for us.

But FIRST, we had to go through an automated touchtone system, then listen to a 10-minute recording describing possible symptoms. When the recording ended, we went and told the receptionist that the recording told Annie to seek immediate medical help. The receptionist told us that we should have stayed on the line to talk to a real person -- even though the recording had said goodbye to us! So we went into the room again. Annie, who could barely speak due to a sore throat, had to talk to an operator for at least five minutes, and we finally got an appointment for five o'clock. It was about 2 at that point.

Things got much better from there. We got in an hour earlier than scheduled. The doctor who saw us diagnosed Annie with either strep throat or a glandular virus, gave us free medicine from the hospital use stash (4 different types of pills!!), and then sent us to the desk to pay a 50-pound consultation fee. There was a new receptionist on, a much older one, who decided that because we were Canadians, we were British( "I bet you don't think of yourselves as British," interjected a nearby male nurse), and therefore did not have to pay for British Medicare. She even made a call to verify this fact, and Annie left with her diagnosis and her drugs, and did not have to pay a cent! I mean -- did not have to pay a pence!