Quote Originally Posted by John_Douglas View Post
Another way to think of it is that the subject of a verb in the infinitive is in the dative. So the subject of отдыхать is Антону. There is a somewhat similar construction in English in sentences like "It is difficult for me to do" - in Russian, the "for me" would be replaced by the dative (though these constructions are much more common in Russian than in English - the хочется construction in English would sound like "It is desired for me to..." which we don't say).

In Russian it's even possible to have a sentence like "мне идти." with just the dative and the verb (it's one of the ways of saying "I need to go").
Excellent,thanks John.

I think part of the problem i had was that i was reading these examples rather than writing them.I find it a lot easier to understand the construction when i have to think about what i'm going to write.

@Seraph - Thanks for the example and the link.I will have a look at that tomorrow.

All the best.