Amsterdam or Barcelona?

Barcelona has a real city beach, several kilometres of sand from Barceloneta to Mar Bella that you can reach on foot or by metro, and a sea warm enough to swim in from June to late September. In midsummer it is crowded and pickpockets are about, but Sitges, Castelldefels and the Maresme coast offer quieter sand within the hour.

Amsterdam can offer the dunes and beach pavilions at Zandvoort and Bloemendaal, half an hour away by train, plus the lakes and the IJburg shore on hot days. The North Sea stays cold and the wind often blows, so a day there feels more like a seaside walk than a beach vacation.

Barcelona eats far better. Catalan cooking is a cuisine in its own right, with suquet, botifarra, calçots in late winter and seafood rice by the sea, and it is backed by neighbourhood markets such as Santa Caterina and Sant Antoni where you eat at the counter. The range runs from cheap workers' set lunches to serious tasting menus.

Amsterdam's own cooking is plain, and its best meals come from its trading past: Indonesian rijsttafel, Surinamese roti, herring from a street stall. Where it shines is drinking, with brown cafés, old jenever tasting rooms and an early-evening borrel with bitterballen, which is a different pleasure from Barcelona's late-morning vermouth and late dinners.

Both cities are first-rate for sightseeing, but in different ways. Amsterdam is about the art on its walls: Rembrandt's Night Watch at the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk all stand on one square, the Anne Frank House is the city's most moving visit, and the canal ring of merchant houses holds the whole thing together. Three or four days covers it well.

Barcelona's strength is its buildings. The Sagrada Família, Casa Batlló, La Pedrera and Park Güell are like nothing else in Europe, and beneath them lie the Roman walls and medieval squares of the Gothic Quarter. Its museums, from the Picasso to the MNAC's Romanesque frescoes, are good rather than overwhelming, and the city easily fills a week.

Both cities go out seriously and both have a deep electronic music scene, so the difference is in the rhythm. Amsterdam's nights begin early in candlelit brown cafés and canal-side terraces in the Jordaan or De Pijp, while the all-night clubs sit in old industrial buildings in Noord, and the Amsterdam Dance Event takes over the city each October. Weekday bars wind down around one.

Barcelona starts later and lives more outdoors. Dinner runs towards eleven, and the drinking moves through Gràcia's squares, cellar cocktail bars in the Born and the pintxos bars of Blai street before the clubs fill around two. Summer brings open-air parties and weekends that hardly end.

Barcelona has the bigger landscapes. The wooded Collserola hills start at the edge of the city, Montjuïc rises above the port, and the beaches have sailing and paddleboarding. Within two hours you can reach the rock pinnacles of Montserrat, the Garraf cliffs and the coves of the Costa Brava, though summer heat pushes serious walking into spring and autumn.

Amsterdam's countryside is gentle and flat, best seen from a bike. A ferry across the IJ takes you into the meadows and wooden villages of Waterland, and the Amsterdamse Bos and the dunes of Zuid-Kennemerland, with their grazing bison, add woods and coastal paths. It is pleasant, but there are no hills, and wind and rain often come along.

Amsterdam has the edge, because the Netherlands packs so many historic towns so close together. Haarlem is a quarter of an hour by train, and Leiden, Delft, Utrecht, The Hague with Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring and modern Rotterdam all lie within about an hour. Add the windmills of Zaanse Schans and Kinderdijk, the Keukenhof in spring and Antwerp across the border, and you have a different outing for every day, all without a car.

Barcelona's trips cover more varied ground: medieval Girona and the Dalí museum at Figueres, Roman Tarragona, the mountain monastery at Montserrat, Sitges by the sea and the cava cellars of the Penedès. Its prettiest villages and Costa Brava harbours are much easier to reach with a car.

Amsterdam suits families who want a calm, compact base, while Barcelona adds a beach to the days out. In Amsterdam, the Artis zoo, one of the oldest in Europe, NEMO's hands-on science museum, pancake houses and city farms keep children busy. Fast bikes, unfenced canal edges and steep canal-house stairs mean small children need holding on to, and the Efteling theme park is about an hour and a half away.

In Barcelona, the city beaches, the aquarium at the old port, CosmoCaixa and the old funfair on Tibidabo, reached by funicular, do the same job, and PortAventura is about an hour south. Children are welcome in restaurants late into the evening, but the narrow, crowded old town is hard work with a pushchair, and July and August get very hot.

Amsterdam is the easier city to get around. Nearly every major sight is within half an hour's walk on flat ground, trams fill the gaps, free ferries cross to Noord and the airport train is short and direct. Hiring a bike is the local way to travel, as long as you can handle the busy lanes.

Barcelona's flat centre and simple metro also serve visitors well, but several of its key sights sit on hills. Park Güell, Montjuïc and Tibidabo mean a steep walk, a funicular or a cable car, and the Sagrada Família is a ride from the Gothic Quarter. In both cities a car is more trouble than it is worth.

Barcelona offers more variety. The Passeig de Gràcia combines Spanish fashion houses with Modernista façades, and the Born, Gràcia and the Raval cover independent designers, small craft shops and vintage records. Espadrilles, ceramics, conserves and cava make good things to take home, though its luxury range is thinner than you might expect.

Amsterdam's shopping is smaller and more concentrated, centred on the boutiques and vintage shops of the Nine Streets and the Jordaan, with the luxury labels on PC Hooftstraat. Its markets give it character, from the Albert Cuyp to the floating Bloemenmarkt with its bulbs, and Delft blue and Dutch cheese are the classic souvenirs.

Neither city is cheap, but Barcelona is the easier on your budget. Amsterdam's canal-ring hotels are among the most expensive in Europe, a heavy tourist tax comes on top, and meals and museum tickets cost Northern European prices. Sleeping in Haarlem or Utrecht is the usual way to save.

In Barcelona, rooms are still the main cost, especially in summer, and Gaudí's buildings charge steep entry fees. You can save by eating the weekday set lunch, at tapas bars and at market counters, where food costs much less than you would pay in Amsterdam.

For classical music, Amsterdam is the stronger choice. The Concertgebouw and its orchestra are among the best in the world, with concerts on most days of the season, and the opera house on the Amstel, the Muziekgebouw and the Bimhuis jazz club add depth. Paradiso and the Melkweg bring in touring bands, and the Holland Festival fills June with ambitious international work.

Barcelona has the historic Liceu and the Palau de la Música Catalana, where even an ordinary concert feels special under the stained glass. It also has flamenco, jazz cellars in the Gothic Quarter and two big early-summer festivals, Sónar and Primavera Sound. In both cities, most spoken theatre is not in English.

Neither city is a place to unwind, though each has its own form of bathing. In Amsterdam it means the Dutch sauna, with large mixed and usually nude day spas on the edge of the city. In Barcelona it means a few Arab-style bath houses with warm pools in the old town.

Outside the spas, Amsterdam's calm comes from early mornings on the quieter canals or a ferry across the IJ. Barcelona slows down over a long lunch in a Gràcia square or on an evening walk in the Collserola hills, and if rest is the main aim, a nearby seaside town is a better base than the city.