Ankara or Kusadasi?

There is no real contest here. Ankara is inland on the plateau, its lakes are for rowing rather than swimming, and in summer swimming means a pool. Kusadasi is built around the sand of Ladies Beach, Long Beach and Pamucak, and the water is clearer still in the Dilek Peninsula coves.

Anyone combining the two would make Kusadasi the beach part of the trip. Expect its town beaches to be crowded and built up in high summer.

Both cities serve honest Turkish cooking rather than food worth travelling for, but the ingredients differ. Ankara is meat and grain country: kebab and pide houses, steam-tray canteens, long breakfasts and its own Ankara tava, plus more modern cafés and meyhanes in Kızılay and Tunalı Hilmi.

Kusadasi eats from the Aegean, with grilled fish, olive-oil vegetables and wild greens. The best of it is in Kaleiçi and the lunchtime lokantas, not on the harbour front, where resort menus take over. Seafood lovers will be happier on the coast, while Ankara shows you more of a city's everyday eating.

Ankara has far stronger sights. The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations traces the region from Çatalhöyük through the Hittites and Phrygians, and Anıtkabir shows the Republic at its most monumental. The citadel, the Temple of Augustus and the Roman baths fill out two or three days.

Kusadasi town needs only an hour or two: the small fortress on Pigeon Island, the Ottoman caravanserai and a few old lanes in Kaleiçi. Its history lies outside town and is reached on day trips.

Kusadasi goes out harder and later, at least in summer. The pubs, karaoke and dance bars of Bar Street and the open-air clubs around Long Beach run into the early hours in July and August, mostly for young package travellers. Out of season the scene shrinks to a handful of bars.

Ankara's evenings are led by students and centre on talking and drinking. There are beer and rock bars stacked in the buildings off Kızılay, smarter places in Tunalı Hilmi and Çankaya, and long rakı dinners. It has little club life, but it stays lively through term time, when the coast has gone quiet.

Kusadasi has the more inviting landscape. On the Dilek Peninsula a forested ridge drops into clear sea, with a canyon walk, wild horses and the Büyük Menderes delta behind it. The granite Latmos mountains above Lake Bafa offer rocky hiking within an hour.

Around Ankara the steppe is open and austere. The Atatürk Forest Farm and the lakes give room to walk and cycle, Soğuksu National Park has pine forest an hour north, and the salt flats of Tuz Gölü draw flamingos in spring. Serious hiking, though, means going much further.

Both make useful bases, but Kusadasi's location is exceptional. Ephesus is about twenty minutes away, with Selçuk, the House of the Virgin Mary and Şirince beside it, and Priene, Miletus and Didyma lie along the coast. In summer a ferry even reaches the Greek island of Samos.

Ankara relies on high-speed trains and longer drives. Konya's Mevlana Museum and Eskişehir's Odunpazarı are easy by rail, and Gordion and Beypazarı are close by road. Hattusa takes a long day, though, and Cappadocia really needs a night away.

For children, Kusadasi is the simpler choice. It has sandy beaches with gentle entry into the water, resort hotels with kids' clubs and pools, and two water parks at the edge of town. The catch is the summer heat, which makes Ephesus and midday outings hard work for small children.

Ankara offers museums rather than water slides: dinosaur skeletons at the MTA Natural History Museum and trains and boats to climb into at the Rahmi M. Koç Museum, with parks and malls for burning off energy. It suits older children better, and its centre is hilly and full of traffic.

Neither is easy everywhere, but for different reasons. Ankara has a proper metro and the Ankaray light rail along its spine from Ulus to Çankaya, with one card for trains and buses. Beyond that the city is spread out and built for cars, so taxis fill the gaps.

Kusadasi is a small town you can walk around the harbour and Kaleiçi, and dolmuş minibuses run to the beaches and Selçuk. Hotels out of town, Priene, Didyma and the national park are much easier with a hire car or a tour.

Ankara has a little more to offer, mainly because its shops serve the people who live there. There are large malls, mid-range boutiques and bookshops on Tunalı Hilmi, and coppersmiths, spice shops and angora goods in the old streets around Samanpazarı.

Kusadasi's bazaar is aimed at the cruise port. It is full of leather, carpets, jewellery and imitation designer goods, sold with a persistent pitch. The weekly market, with olive oil, dried figs and spices, is the better place to buy.

Ankara is the cheaper of the two, because it is a government city with no tourist pricing. Hotels, canteen meals, metro rides and taxis are all inexpensive, and only alcohol, international hotel chains and museum fees push costs up.

Kusadasi is reasonable rather than cheap. Dolmuş rides and lokanta lunches cost little, but harbour restaurants and beach clubs charge tourist rates. Entry to Ephesus and the other ancient sites also adds up over a week of outings.

This is one of Ankara's clearest advantages. As the capital it is home to the State Opera and Ballet near Ulus, the Presidential Symphony Orchestra and the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, so a concert or ballet is easy to fit in. The State Theatres perform in Turkish.

Kusadasi has no theatre, opera or concert season. Entertainment means Turkish-night dinner shows with folk and belly dancing, cover bands in bars and the occasional open-air concert in summer.

The two are close, and in both the hammam is at the centre. Ankara's are working neighbourhood baths in Ulus and Hamamönü, and real thermal water lies about an hour away at Kızılcahamam and Haymana.

Kusadasi has one historic bath in the old quarter and resort hammams with foam massage, aimed more at tourists than locals. It does offer something Ankara cannot: quiet coves and hotels outside town that are good places to slow down in May, June and September.