It seems to be an ongoing argument this one - should we refer to a Cooking Holiday as a cooking holiday or a cooking vacation? From the various opinions I have gathered over the last eighteen months it would seem that it is only the UK that uses the term holiday in this context.

Apart from the UK it would seem that for the rest of the world a holiday is a special day like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, etc - although just to confuse the issue we would also refer to these days as holidays (which is where the word originates: Holy Day).

This debate about the correct meaning of these words would probably not have arisen before the advent of the Internet. The Internet. is responsible for a lot all ready but one area I have not seen much discussion on is how it is changing the written word and word usage. Word usage is important to any business that has a web site because it is relevant words on the web page that will bring visitors to the web site via search engines like Google.

So if I want to promote "Cooking Holidays" outside the UK I must use the phrase "Cooking Vacations" but this the leaves me with a conundrum. If my web pages refer to "Cooking Vacations" then no-one in the UK is going to find my pages . . .

If you have got any input or suggestions please email me <click here>

From The Oxford Dictionary:

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Vacation :

part of year constituting fixed period of cessation from work (Christmas, Easter, Whitsun, long or summer vacation)

• Origin - Latin word vaccatio meaning to vacate

Holiday :

day of festivity or recreation, when no work is done.

• Origin - Holy Day

From The Oxford Thesaurus:

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Holiday :

Time off, break, recess, respite, leave (of absence), furlough, sabbatical
Festival, feast, celebration, fete, gala, fair, red-letter day, event

Vacation :

Holiday, leave, leisure, recess, respite, rest, sojourn

So what is a cooking holiday or vacation like?

The only way to truly find out is to go on one! However, to give you a feel for what you might expect we have put together a couple of pages:

• Cooking in Provence . . . the idyllic life of the high flyer
  Roswitha Remling and Scott Ashkenaz took asabbatical in 2000, part of which was a week's cooking holiday at Le Baou d'Infer in Provence with Chef Alex Mackay. They havekindly given us permission to reproduce the photographs they took to give you an insight into what a fabulous way this is to enjoy yourself.

• Cooking in Tuscany . . . enjoying the food and the romanticism of Italy
  This is a photographic account of a cooking holiday in Tuscany that was hosted by Hub-UK during the summer of 2005 and was the inspiration for this web site. Following our arrival at Rome's International Airports - needless to say we all contrived to arrive at different times and airports - we were met and transferred from Rome to Tuscany either in an air-conditioned minibus or one of the high speed air-conditioned trains.