Almaty or Baku?

Neither city is a beach destination, but only Baku has a sea. From Almaty the nearest swim is the Kapchagay reservoir, an hour and a half away across the steppe, and the mountain lakes are far too cold for swimming.

Baku's beaches at Bilgah, Novkhani and Mardakan are a short taxi ride up the Absheron shore. They are sandy and warm in high summer, though flat, shallow and sometimes littered. A half-day swim fits easily into a summer stay.

Both cities eat well, but differently. Almaty is a Central Asian crossroads: Kazakh kazy and beshbarmak, Uyghur lagman and manty above all, Uzbek plov and Korean salads, with the Green Bazaar as the place to graze.

Baku cooks one cuisine in depth. Expect saffron plov, sturgeon kebabs, qutab and tables piled with herbs, ending in tea with jam. It also has its own wine from the Shamakhi hills and a local brandy, while most of Almaty's wine is imported.

Baku has far more history on show. Icherisheher, the walled Old City, holds the Maiden Tower and the Palace of the Shirvanshahs. Outside the walls, the oil barons' sandstone mansions give the centre a grand face, and Zaha Hadid's flowing Heydar Aliyev Center provides the modern contrast.

Earthquakes left Almaty with little older than the late nineteenth century, so it has fewer sights. The main ones are the painted wooden Zenkov Cathedral, the Scythian gold in the Central State Museum and the Kasteyev collection of Kazakh art, with Soviet modernist façades for those who enjoy them.

Neither city draws travellers for its nights, but people go out in different ways. Almaty runs later, with cocktail bars and craft beer pubs around Panfilov and Abylai Khan and a few clubs open until morning at weekends. In Baku the evening starts as a stroll along the Boulevard and Nizami Street and moves on to a pub, a wine bar or a hotel rooftop rather than a dance floor.

This is where the two differ most. In Almaty the Trans-Ili Alatau starts at the city's southern edge. Medeu is half an hour away, a gondola runs on to Shymbulak for skiing or high hiking, and glacier trails and Big Almaty Lake are a short drive off.

Baku sits on a bare semi-desert peninsula of oil fields and salt lakes. Its sights are strange rather than beautiful: mud volcanoes, the burning hillside of Yanar Dag and the windswept Gobustan plateau. The nearest real mountains are three hours away in the Caucasus.

Baku has more within a day's reach. The rock carvings at Gobustan and the mud volcanoes make a full outing an hour south. The Ateshgah fire temple and the towers at Mardakan fill easy half-days, and Shamakhi adds a mausoleum built into a cliff, plus vineyards.

Day trips from Almaty mostly mean landscapes rather than places. The heritage options are the burial mounds at Esik, where the Golden Man was found, and the Tamgaly petroglyphs. Charyn Canyon and Bishkek both work better as overnight trips.

Both cities welcome children warmly, and neither has a big theme park or aquarium, so the difference is one of kind. Almaty's treats are outdoors and change with the seasons: the Kok-Tobe cable car and petting zoo, Central Park and the zoo, skating at Medeu and gentle slopes at Shymbulak.

Baku's treats are gathered along the seafront Boulevard, with playgrounds, fountains and boat rides, plus the funicular up to Highland Park. Hot summers and stepped underpasses mean it suits older children better than pushchairs.

Baku is easier on foot. The Old City, Fountain Square, Nizami Street and the Boulevard are all close together, its metro with deep stations runs on one card, and app taxis cheaply cover the rest.

Almaty's leafy grid is pleasant to walk in the core, and the slope up towards the peaks makes it hard to get lost. Beyond the centre, though, distances are long and the single metro line is of little use. Where it does better is in the mountains: buses and gondolas reach Medeu and Shymbulak without a car, while Baku's beaches and Gobustan need a taxi or a driver.

Baku gives you a clearer reason to shop: carpets. Dealers in the Old City sell handwoven pieces from Quba and Karabakh, alongside kelims, silk kelaghayi scarves and copperware from Lahij, though older carpets need a certificate for export.

Almaty is mostly bazaars and malls. Look for dried fruit and honey at the Green Bazaar and felt or embroidered souvenirs, and treat sprawling Barakholka as a spectacle rather than a place to buy. Neither city is worth the trip for fashion.

Almaty makes a budget go further. Noodle houses, bazaar meals, taxis and even opera tickets cost little, and only central business hotels and imported drinks come close to Western prices.

Baku is cheap on the metro and in tea houses and canteens, but its smart hotels and seafront restaurants can charge close to Western European rates. That makes a simple Old City guesthouse matter more there.

Both cities keep a serious opera and ballet house and a philharmonic, so a formal evening out is much the same in either. Almaty's Abai theatre holds to the Russian ballet tradition, and the Kazakh State Philharmonic adds dombra concerts, with a puppet theatre on the side.

Baku's local sound is mugham, the UNESCO-recognised improvised music of the tar and kamancha, heard at the International Mugham Centre on the seafront. It also has a jazz tradition that blends with mugham.

Almaty is the better place to unwind. Arasan, beside Panfilov Park, puts a banya with birch whisking, Finnish saunas and a domed hammam under one roof, and the Alma-Arasan gorge has hot springs and old sanatoria.

In Baku the medieval baths of the Old City are mostly for looking at, so real pampering means a hotel spa. Its calm comes from tea houses and Boulevard evenings, but the wind and traffic keep it a city for sightseeing.