Rubicund

IMO Madeira is great for a week, stretching it for 2 weeks, although that's without adding in any walks along the Levadas. Madeira is renowned for the scenic walks along these old irrigation channels in the hills and they pass through some of the most beautiful scenery.

The climate will certainly be milder than the rest of Europe, as will the Canary Islands. There are several Pousadas on the island, one or two in breathtaking locations.

I'll never forget arriving at a village high in the mountains and finding a small bar & restaurant that offered roasted chestnuts as a snack. With a nice beer, they went down very well.

stokebailey

Madeira sounds lovely, Rubicund. I'd love to go there, will add to my list.

Julies, I did look at Sicily a lot; it was right up there in my 4-way coin-tossing.

Greece it is, based partly on coin toss and partly on daughter's wishes. Decision phase over and tickets bought. We'll have to compromise on urban and nature phases.

Thank you all so much for your help.

Heimdall

Hi stokebailey,

Please come back with a trip report.

annhig

I can't imagine traveling somewhere without basic phrases in the local language.>>

stoke, if you're up for a language challenge, I can suggest Bulgaria. Like you I'm always keen to try to learn at least a bit before we go, but because our visit to Sofia was rather sprung on us I didn't get much of a chance, but it wouldn't have made much difference as it's pretty well incomprehensible.

Sofia was lovely though and very interesting, with quite a few day trip possibilities which sadly we didn't have time for. Not sure what the weather is likely to be like in February - the warmth and sunshine that we enjoyed in mid-November was said to be most unusual so who can tell?

perhaps more seriously, Malta would fit the bill for a week, as would Madeira, with the former having more to see in the way of history, I suspect [I've been to Malta, but not to Madeira, so I couldn't say for sure].

Good luck with finding the ideal place!

stokebailey

Hi, Heimdall, I will, and thanks.

Ha, Ann. Bulgarian! You intrepid Higgses. If you think I'm eager for that kind of language challenge I have given the wrong impression. My older brother studied ancient Greek, and could be heard from all around the house declaiming it in his room. He claimed that it had to be declaimed. Until last week I assumed it would be my total lifetime exposure.

We've settled on Greece, weather or not, so I'll start a separate thread with my several questions.

annhig

great - Greece. My experience is limited to a trip to Crete, a very long time ago; being intrepid [for which read foolish] having taken buses to get along the northern more built up coast of the island, we decided to hire a car to drive back along the southern coast, using the road that was shown clearly on the map which I still have. It turned out that the road marked on said map was purely advisory, and existed more in the imagination of the map maker than in reality and so far as I know that remains the position.

BTW, while we were discussing languages with some of our new Bulgarian friends, it emerged that there was a funny difference between Bulgarian and Greek in that in Greek "NE" [accompanied by a shake of the head] means YES, whereas in Bulgaria [where it is accompanied by a nod of the head] it means NO. This must be very confusing for people who move frequently between the two countries, which share quite along border - and it certainly confused me.

I do still remember some Greek, which when spoken is quite intuitive, [unlike Bulgarian!] apart from the positive head-shaking and negative nodding. In particular I remember "peponi" [sorry for the lack of actual Greek, I never mastered the written language] means water melon.

I hope that's useful.

mariha2912

Somehow some topics tend to get very off topic but for the record in Greek peponi = melon while karpouzi= water melon.

Furthermore ne or nie or niet or similar= no on many languages on Eastern Europe and Balcans and even central Europe (nie= no in Polish for example while tak= yes and no~yes ,as in yeah, I agree!) and let's not start on body language.....

annhig

thanks, mariha - I wasn't completely wrong, and it was about 35 years ago! Greek seems to be the "outlier" in Europe when it comes to "Ne" meaning yes - anyone know why?

mariha2912

You are welcome.

Different countries/regions of Europe use languages originating from different language families.

Modern languages that originate from the same language family often feature similar structure and their words have many common roots. So you may meet similar-ish words for same meaning such as the nie example above.

The languages coming from the Hellinic language family are the ones used mainly in modern Greece and Cyprus plus a few isolated areas/communities such as Calabria and Salento on southern Italy, some villages in Albania and Turkey, some communities in middle east and former USSR etc. This is a rather small area comparing with other regions of Europe where other languages, coming from an other common root are used.

For example Italian, French, Spanish, Portugese, Romanian and many other modern languages and dialects originate from Vulgar Latin and are spoken on a very large part of Europe while an other very large part of Europe is dominated by languages originating from the generic Slavic language family (for example Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, Polish, Slovac, Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian and many others).

So this is why Greek seems to be the outlier I guess...

annhig

Thank you again, mariha.

Now can you tell me why I find German, French, Italian and Spanish relatively easy but struggle with Latin?

mariha2912

For the same reason I find ancient Greek very very difficult although modern Greek is my native language lol

annhig

That's reassuring, mariha. I think that it is the lack of opportunities to practice talking, like you would a living language, that forms a barrier for me. Even Bulgarian I could see might make sense if one were there, speaking it.