Today the plan was to write one of those “lazy posts” on the Italian City of David. Its where I spend some time picking the best pictures of some place I visited recently and just throw them in here with minimal word content. But it just feels weird to do that today due to some circumstances.
When people mention the subject of Trip Advisor, the immediate thing that comes to mind to most people is Reviews. Mainly reviews of Restaurants, Hotels, and Attractions. But very few know about Trip Advisor’s other powerful arm, the Forum. You can spend a month in some city or country’s TA forum and gain a wealth of information. Information that is absent from your guidebook. The forum to me is internet’s best travel tool. All this, thanks to regular forum participants that spend their spare time helping tourists with the various questions they have. They are some of their city’s greatest ambassadors. One of those ambassadors was Eugene Martinez who tragically passed away a few days ago. I never actually met Eugene but we came very close when I was there in June. Eugene was a tremendous help in making our Florence stay as memorable as it was. From my interactions with him and from what I heard he was kind, caring, funny, and passionate about the city of Florence and Tuscany. He will be sorely missed.
Eating With Ziggy 
this is a lovely tribute to Eugene, I also was very saddend to hear he has left us and gone to join the angels watching over Florence, he will be missed greatly. Even though we are on different sides of the world, these forums connect us even if we don’t know each other & I did feel connected to Eugene in some strange way, he also has a facebook page where he posted a very amusing picture of himself that I will try to send to you. Thankyou Ziggy for these wondeful imagaes, it takes me right back there. Bellaitaliaadelaide (forum name),
picture as promised
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 01:22:58 +0000 To: toni868@hotmail.com
Thanks for the kind words Toni. Did you mean to send me a link to the image?
try this to see if it works, i tried to email the pic to you but it seems not to have worked
https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=673940619297145&set=a.153825731308639.31580.100000436396966&type=1&theater
Same here, Ziggy. Where were you to take the marvellous shot of Santa Croce. I’ve never seen it from that angle before.
I think that was from the roof of Palazzo Vecchio. Yeh I like that photo too
Thanks Toni, thats a good one
Crying, Zigster. Crying. THANK YOU.