It’s not all about teeth you know!!

Thursday….to the dentist after seeing Chris off. This time the good new…the report on the full XRays…good, excellent, no other major problems visible…phew. So if they were able to finish this crown it would all be good with nothing to follow up in Australia. But all still very uncertain at this stage. It was a quiet night!

The next day, Friday, it was another 2.5 hours with the specialist dentist (Lorenza) but….breakthrough!! She has been able to create a new canal so everyone was happy, then it was go go go…phone calls, negotiations, trying to get the work done before I leave. They decided to miss the step of the temporary crown. They reshaped the crown they took off to use as the temporary crown and all efforts were directed to the permanent..still not sure but hoping to get it all done to finish up on Wednesday.

Home from the dentist to await the arrival of Ham and Az!! It was Friday night and I was anxious to let the fun begin and to forget the dentist for a while. It was great to see H&A again, they were even a little earlier than I expected which was great. After settling in we hit the town, wandered around allowing me to proudly show off the city I had grown to love. Coming back and showing people around it has really consolidated my love for this lively, youthful, and beautiful city. We ended up in a Piazza for aperativos… H&A really know the meaning of aperativo, ordering martinis and ‘Gibsons’ while I stick with a Spritz. Then on to the restaurant I have always taken my visitors to….Osteria di Poeti. It never fails to please and it did again on Friday night. Yummy food and a lovely ambience. We all drank to much and Hammy and Ariane will swear I was ‘unsteady’ on the way home, this of course is significantly exaggerated.

Saturday was spent just exploring Bologna, sorting out parking issues with H&A’s car, having morning coffee, wandering around the market streets, fitting in the mandatory church with wonderful terracotta sculptures, picking up some lunch, picking up a gelato, having a bit of an afternoon rest and then fitting in another couple church’s. Back to the aperativo place for some more (I stuck with wine this time). At this point we parted company as I went to Fabrizia and Giancarlo’s apartment for dinner and H&A hit the lively streets of Bologna on a Saturday night. My night was OK…the good news was that the technicians had been working on my crown on Saturday and had got it ready so it’s all systems go.

When H&A got back after their night out we had a final drink together and some little cakes they had brought home. It was our final little ceremony.

This morning after everyone had got ready, bags were packed and loaded into the car in the nearby carpark, we went for a coffee and said our goodbyes….

Of course I was / am sad, isn’t it the way I am? And this time I won’t see them until they are back in Melbourne, hopefully in the first half of 2016. I’ve been a bit lost for the rest of the day, feeling a bit empty and wishing now that I could wiggle the nose and be at home. But no, there’s still a tooth to finally fix, Roma to revisit briefly and another goodbye to Chris, who I will also miss. But tomorrow starts my final week in Italy…what I think about that is unknown, even to me.

Lots of love to those of you with the extraordinary loyalty to have read this for the past year.