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Hi Sebastian

There is no such problem in the Azores. It rains there "almost" every day...

Thanks Johnny. Ill probbaly do a recce in the next few weeks.

On which island is the best, it depends on your age and your interests. If you are "older", your best bet would be to be on Sao Miguel, where the big hospitals and the "facilites" are. Terceira is also pretty good and is the "posh" island because of its history and the American influence, thanks to the American airbase which was there for decades (there is a very pared down version of the airbase there at the moment).

Santa Maria - LOVE Santa Maria, but that's for quiet introverts who don't need a lot of night life. The population was 11,000 until the first international airport was established (established on Santa Maria, but later transferred to Sao Miguel). People left Santa Maria for Canada and the States, leaving a population of around 5,000. There is a surprisingly large ex-pat population on Santa Maria (Germans and Americans) and it is a small friendly community (and my own opinion is that the Portuguese accent is closer to mainland Portugal than any of the other islands. (Sao Miguel's accent is the most incomprehensible).

The trio of islands (Flores, Sao Jorge and Pico) often sit right in the middle of the vicious weather systems that sweep across the Atlantic i.e. the weather is generally awful. I know very little about the smaller island of Flores and Corvo.

Sao Miguel is like one huge farm. Yes, it rains a lot here - there is a reason why the island is so green, but the weather can be quite dry and certainly very hot, between late June to mid-September. Some years it rains in summer, but most of my summers here have been quite dry.