Albufeira or Toledo?

Albufeira was built around its beaches. Fishermen's beach and Peneco lie right under the old town, the long sands of Oura and Falésia stretch east, and quieter coves such as São Rafael lie to the west, all backed by ochre cliffs and stacks. The water is usually calm, and swimming is comfortable from June into early October.

Toledo has nothing to compare. It stands on the Castilian plateau, hours from any coast, and the Tagus in its gorge is not a river for swimming. On hot days a hotel or municipal pool is the only option.

The two are on a par for eating, and in both places the meals worth having are a few streets away from the crowds. In Albufeira that means walking past the multilingual menus of the Strip to the grills near the fishermen's beach, where you will find sardines, bream, octopus and copper cataplanas of clams and pork.

Toledo's cooking is the heavier food of the interior: partridge in a wine and vinegar sauce, venison and wild boar, carcamusas and Manchego cheese, with convent marzipan to finish. It also keeps the habit of a small tapa with each drink in the bars near Zocodover. Choose the coast for fish and Castile for game.

This is where the two differ most after the beach. Toledo's whole hilltop old town is a historic monument, layered with Roman, Visigothic, Islamic, Jewish and Christian Spain. The Gothic cathedral and its sacristy of El Greco and Goya, the small mosque of Cristo de la Luz, the synagogues of Santa María la Blanca and El Tránsito, and San Juan de los Reyes all lie within a short walk of each other.

Albufeira offers a pleasant early-evening stroll through whitewashed lanes, a few traces of Moorish wall, a clock tower with an iron bell cage and two small museums. You can see all of it in a morning, and anyone keen on history ends up driving to Silves or Faro.

Albufeira is a party town, and Toledo is not. The Strip in Montechoro runs neon bars, karaoke, sports pubs and clubs until dawn in high summer, with a young crowd and plenty of stag and hen groups, while Oura and the old town square are a little calmer. The scene is cheerful rather than stylish, and much of it closes from November to March.

Toledo's evenings consist of a late dinner and a round of tapas around Zocodover. After that the old town falls quiet, apart from a few student bars at weekends. For a real night out, people there take the train to Madrid.

Albufeira has the more striking landscape on its doorstep. The golden limestone coast is full of arches, sinkholes and sea caves. The Seven Hanging Valleys trail is about half an hour away, and boats and kayaks go to the Benagil grotto. The Ria Formosa lagoons and the cork-oak hills of Monchique add birdwatching and gentle hiking further out.

Toledo's best outdoor walk is the path around the Tagus gorge below the walls, with the views back from the cigarrales on the far bank. Beyond that lie the flat olive and wheat country of La Mancha, the low wooded Montes de Toledo and, about two hours away, the red deer of Cabañeros.

Toledo makes the stronger base for outings because Madrid is half an hour away by high-speed train, which brings the Prado, the Reina Sofía and the royal palace within easy reach. Aranjuez and El Escorial are close too, and so are the windmills of Consuegra. Segovia, Ávila and Cuenca make long but worthwhile days.

From Albufeira the choices are gentler: Silves and its red castle, Loulé's market hall, walled Faro, Lagos and Tavira. They are attractive towns but not major heritage sites, and a car makes most of them far easier.

Albufeira is designed for a family summer. Zoomarine's dolphin and sea lion shows are just outside town, water parks are a short drive away, and the wide lifeguarded beaches at Oura, Galé and Falésia are usually calm. Families tend to stay in the quieter areas east or west of the Strip.

Toledo has a history-show theme park on the outskirts, and its armour shops and castle-like Alcázar go down well with children. The sights are mostly churches and paintings, though, and the hot, cobbled lanes wear out pushchairs and small legs. A short stay with early starts and a midday break is the way to do it.

Toledo is far easier to get around because almost everything is inside an old town you can cross in twenty minutes. The hill is steep and the lanes twist, but public escalators carry you up from the car parks below the walls.

Albufeira spreads for kilometres through Montechoro, Oura and Galé, and its local buses link these areas only patchily. The railway station is about 6km inland. Most visitors take taxis at night and hire a car for the coves and cliff walks.

Neither is a shopping destination, but Toledo's stock has deeper roots. Damascene work of gold inlaid in black steel, Toledo blades, convent marzipan and Talavera ceramics are all tied to the city or its region, although it pays to look for workshops that make their own.

Albufeira sells mostly beachwear, football shirts and souvenirs. The better buys are painted Algarve pottery, cork goods and medronho, and ordinary fashion means a drive to the mall at Guia.

Costs are much the same overall, but they rise and fall for different reasons. Albufeira depends on the season. Competition keeps meals and drinks cheap, summer sea-view rooms are expensive, and the same apartments become a bargain from October to May.

In Toledo the savings come from the tapa served with each drink and the set lunches in the taverns. What adds up is the separate entry fee at the cathedral, the synagogues and the El Greco sites, and rooms with a Tagus view inside the walls cost more at weekends.

Toledo has the edge, although neither city has much of a stage scene. It has a real theatre in the nineteenth-century Teatro de Rojas, occasional organ and choral music in its churches, and the Corpus Christi procession through streets hung with tapestries.

Albufeira's live entertainment is aimed at the resort crowd: tribute acts in bars, hotel cabaret and fado dinner shows for visitors, plus free summer concerts on the square by the fishermen's beach.

Neither city has a bathing tradition, and both rely on hotel spas. What differs is where the calm comes from. In Albufeira it comes from the cliff-top resorts and the quiet stretches around Galé and Falésia, from mild sunny winters, and from the real thermal waters of Caldas de Monchique an hour inland.

Toledo has a few Arab-style baths in vaulted rooms. Its main restful asset is the stillness of its lanes and river views early in the morning and late in the evening, once the tour groups have left.