My husband has a 4-5 day break between business in Milan and Geneva in mid-January, and would like to travel to someplace warm -- or at least warmer than those two cities. We've never been to Europe in the winter so we are unfamiliar with January temperatures. Any ideas?

Go south - Rome should be tolerable at avg hi in 50s and low in 40s. Northern Italy can get quite cool.

no place in Europe will be warm in January. Even Rome can be quite cold.

Canary Islands? That's about the warmest place I could think of for January. Even though they're off the coast of Africa, they're still part of Spain and the average Jan temp in Gran Canaria is 22 degrees C. Not bad. Whether that's a place you really want to visit is another thing, of course.

Canary Islands or Maderia would be the nearest "European" places for warm weather

You can luck out and have a few mild days in a row, but it is winter, after all, and the south gets cold also.

What is warm to you?

Fly to Palermo, easy and cheap from Milan MXP (MyAir) and Bergamo (easyjet), averages are in the mid-teens (fifties on the old scale), a good midday sun gets above twenty, an unusually cold night gets down to freezing but not all that often in the city.

With the climate changes I think it is hard to know pat. It was either last winter or the winter before that the southern part of Italy had horrible snowstorms and was much colder then the rest of Italy except for the far north. Maybe if you could make last minute arrangements depending on the weather that would be best.

Where ever you go in January it's going to get dark pretty early, so how about embracing the cold. Spend the days either skiing or meandering through a museum, followed by long fabulous lunch, maybe a nap, dinner and some type of live performance(play,symphony, opera, live music).

Just a thought. it might be easier packing for one climate as opposed to two. Have a great time1

Another possibility would be the island of Ibiza off the coast of Spain in the Med. You could do a Milan-Ibiza-Geneva on Iberia for about $350. Average temp there in Jan is in the 70's. LOTS of nightlife if you are interested in that.

Do you mean warmer, or actually warm? I was very happy with Rome in January 2005. It was sunny, and by afternoon I was walking around in shirt sleeves. Of course many women were wearing fur coats, so it depends on your tolerance level too.