Antwerp or Lille?

Neither city is a place for a beach trip, and the North Sea stays cold even in August. The difference is in how far away the sand is. Lille's nearest beach, the wide, windy strand at Malo-les-Bains in Dunkirk, is about an hour by train. From Antwerp, Blankenberge and Knokke take closer to two hours, although the city does have riverside sand at Sint-Annastrand for sitting on rather than swimming.

The two eat from the same Flemish tradition, stews braised in beer included, but Antwerp's stoofvlees and mussels with frites lean Belgian, while Lille's estaminets add potjevleesch, the welsh and pungent Maroilles cheese. Antwerp has more ambition at the top end, with design-led cooking and a few starred tables in Het Zuid and Het Eilandje.

Lille is stronger on everyday character: the wood-panelled taverns of Vieux-Lille, old pastry shops known for their waffles, and the multi-ethnic Sunday market at Wazemmes. Beer leads in both. Antwerp has its bolleke of local amber ale and Trappist lists in brown cafés, and Lille mixes French and Belgian ales in its beer bars.

Antwerp has more to see. Rubens's altarpieces in the cathedral, his house and studio, and the Plantin-Moretus printing house, which is on the UNESCO list, make a Baroque core that Lille cannot quite equal. Around them are the domed Central Station, the Art Nouveau streets of Zurenborg and modern museums such as the MAS and MoMu.

Lille's strength is concentrated in a single great museum, the Palais des Beaux-Arts, set among the carved brick of Vieux-Lille and the UNESCO-listed belfry. La Piscine in Roubaix, an art museum inside an old pool, is the memorable extra. Both fill two or three days, but Antwerp's days are fuller.

Both go out harder than their size suggests, but in different ways. Antwerp has the clubs: house and techno in old warehouses and under the railway near the docks, one of the best-known gay scenes in the Low Countries, and bars with no fixed closing time.

Lille is a student town first. Rue Masséna and Rue Solférino fill with cheap, loud bars on Thursdays, and the brick cellar bars of Vieux-Lille are quieter. For a serious late night, people in Lille have traditionally headed over the border into Belgium.

Both sit in flat, crowded Flemish country, and neither is a trip for the outdoors. Antwerp's best escape is the heathland, dunes and pine woods of the Kalmthoutse Heide, plus bike rides along the dykes of the Scheldt polders. Lille has the low Monts de Flandre for short walks with views and the canal towpaths along the Deûle. The chalk cliffs of the Opal Coast are within a long day's reach of Lille.

Both are excellent bases, and the difference is in direction. From Antwerp, the trains run to Belgium's historic cities and north into the Netherlands: Mechelen, Ghent, Bruges, then Rotterdam, Delft and the Kinderdijk windmills.

Lille faces Belgium and France at once. Brussels is about half an hour away, Paris around an hour by TGV and London within reach for an ambitious day. Arras, Amiens Cathedral, the Louvre-Lens and the First World War battlefields around Ypres and the Somme add a kind of trip that Antwerp cannot match.

Antwerp is easier with children. Its zoo, one of the oldest in the world, sits beside Central Station, and the Steen castle, the trams and the walk through the foot tunnel under the river all keep children busy without any planning. The centre is flat and generally fine with a pushchair.

Lille manages well enough around its Citadel park, with a small zoo, playgrounds and wide paths for scooters, and there is a hands-on science centre a metro ride away. The larger attractions, a big zoo park in Belgium and the aquarium at Boulogne-sur-Mer, mean longer trips, and the cobbles of Vieux-Lille are hard going with a buggy.

Both have compact, walkable centres where a car is only a burden. Antwerp's trams and premetro cover the outer districts, and its shared bikes and cycle lanes make it the better city to cycle in, if you watch the tram tracks. Lille has the driverless VAL metro and a tram to Roubaix, and its two stations stand side by side next to the old town, which makes setting off on day trips very easy.

Antwerp is the place to shop for fashion. The avant-garde designers from its academy shaped the boutiques of the Nationalestraat, Kammenstraat and Het Zuid. Add the diamond quarter, the antique shops of the Kloosterstraat and the Meir high street, and there is more here worth the trip.

Lille covers the basics well, with the chains on Rue Neuve, the Euralille mall and independent shops and delicatessens in Vieux-Lille. Its distinctive moment comes once a year, when the Braderie fills kilometres of streets with flea-market stalls at the start of September.

Lille is the cheaper stay. Its hotels are reasonable outside the Braderie and the trade fairs, and estaminet meals, the metro and the museums are all fairly priced. Day to day it costs what any French city does.

Antwerp follows Belgian price levels, which hit hardest at sit-down dinners. Rooms still undercut Brussels, and frites, café beer and lunch menus keep the bill down, so it suits a mid-range budget better than a shoestring one.

Antwerp has the somewhat stronger programme, mainly thanks to contemporary dance. Opera Ballet Vlaanderen performs in the opera house on the Frankrijklei, the deSingel campus is adventurous, and early music has a home in a Baroque church. Much of the theatre is in Dutch, though.

Lille's season is dependable rather than distinctive. There is the grand Opéra on the Place du Théâtre, the Orchestre National de Lille and the Théâtre du Nord, which plays in French and so is easier going for many visitors than Flemish theatre.

Neither city is a place to come for rest, and both mostly offer hotel spas and slow café afternoons. The options for a proper soak differ. From Antwerp, it means a large sauna complex in the suburbs, usually reached by car. Lille has a real thermal bath at Saint-Amand-les-Eaux, a short train ride away.