Antwerp or London?

Neither city is a place for a beach vacation, though London gets you to the sea a little more easily. Brighton's pebble beach and pier are about an hour away by train, and Margate and Whitstable have sandier stretches. From Antwerp, the Belgian coast at Blankenberge or Knokke takes the better part of two hours each way. In both places the water rarely gets above about 18°C.

London also has a real swimming culture of its own, with the lidos at Brockwell Park and Parliament Hill and the Hampstead Heath ponds. Antwerp has nothing like that, only outdoor pools and recreation lakes on the edge of the city, and the Scheldt is not for swimming.

Antwerp has a clear local cuisine and does it well: stoofvlees braised in dark beer, mussels with frites, Antwerpse handjes, and above all beer, from the local amber ale in its round glass to Trappist lists in the cafés near the cathedral. Its modern restaurants cluster in Het Zuid and Het Eilandje.

London offers much more range and depth. The Bangladeshi cooking of Brick Lane, Punjabi food in Southall, Turkish grills in Green Lanes and Caribbean kitchens south of the river sit alongside a large fine-dining scene and Borough Market. Antwerp is a place to eat Flemish food. London is a place to eat almost anything.

Antwerp has a focused offer that is easy to cover. You can see Rubens in the cathedral and in his own house, the Plantin-Moretus printing house, the domed Central Station and the Art Nouveau of Zurenborg in two or three days.

London works on another scale. The British Museum, the National Gallery, the V&A and the two Tates are free, and each could fill a day, before you reach the Tower, Westminster Abbey, St Paul's or Greenwich. A week there still leaves most of it unseen, so London is the city for anyone who travels mainly for museums and monuments.

Antwerp punches above its size. Bars have no fixed closing time, house and techno nights fill warehouses near the docks, and the gay scene is well known across the Low Countries. Weekdays are quiet, though, and the whole scene fits within a few districts.

London is in another league for choice and scale. Soho's late cocktail bars, warehouse parties in Hackney and Dalston and the big venues of Brixton and Peckham give you a different night in each district, all on top of thousands of pubs. Many of those pubs close around eleven, so Antwerp can actually feel less time-bound on an ordinary weeknight.

London is much the greener of the two. Hyde Park and Regent's Park run through the centre, Hampstead Heath looks out over the skyline, and deer roam Richmond Park. Kew and the Thames Path add more, and the South Downs and Chilterns are an hour or so away by train.

Antwerp sits in flat, built-up country dominated by the port. Its best outdoor escape is the heath, dunes and pine woods of the Kalmthoutse Heide, and otherwise you are cycling on polder dykes along the Scheldt. That is pleasant on a bike, but it is not a reason to choose the city.

Both cities are excellent bases, and the difference is in what you see. From Antwerp, the trips are short hops between Flemish art cities: Mechelen, Ghent's Van Eyck altarpiece, Leuven and Bruges. It also crosses a border easily, with Rotterdam, Delft and Kinderdijk in the Netherlands within a day.

From London, the outings are more varied in kind: the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, Windsor Castle, Bath's Roman baths, Stonehenge with Salisbury, Canterbury Cathedral and the coast at Brighton. Its trains have farther to go, but the range of themes is wider.

London is far easier to fill with children's days. The Natural History and Science Museums and the Young V&A are free, the parks have boating lakes and the pirate-ship playground, and Legoland and the Harry Potter studio tour are within reach. Long distances and stairs at Tube stations make it tiring with a buggy, however.

Antwerp is gentler and much smaller. The zoo is right beside Central Station, the flat centre suits a pushchair, and the foot tunnel under the Scheldt and the Steen castle appeal to children. Once those are done, though, the options thin out quickly.

London has the more complete system. The Underground, the Elizabeth line, buses and Thames riverboats reach almost everywhere on a single contactless card, and the central stretch from Westminster to the South Bank is good walking. The cost is distance, crowded rush hours and long station corridors.

Antwerp's advantage is its small size rather than its network. Most sights lie within a half-hour walk of Central Station, and trams and shared bikes cover Het Eilandje and Zurenborg. You will use transport much less there, but it does less for you outside the centre.

Antwerp has a clear specialism: conceptual Belgian fashion in the boutiques of the Nationalestraat and Kammenstraat, shaped by the city's famous fashion academy. It also has the diamond quarter, antiques on the Kloosterstraat, and chocolate and beer to take home.

London offers far more across the board. It has luxury houses on Bond Street, bespoke tailoring on Savile Row, department stores such as Liberty and Fortnum & Mason, and weekend markets from Portobello Road to Columbia Road. Antwerp suits a focused fashion hunt, while London suits a whole trip built around shopping.

Antwerp is the cheaper stay, although it is still not a budget city. Rooms usually cost less than in the capitals nearby, lunch menus soften Belgian restaurant prices, and you can walk almost everywhere.

London is costly at nearly every turn: small, expensive hotel rooms, theatre seats and pub rounds, and high fares on each journey. What makes up for it is the free national museums and parks, but over a few days Antwerp will leave considerably more in your pocket.

Here the gap is widest. London is one of the world's two great theatre cities, with the West End, the National Theatre, the Globe and the fringe stages above pubs. On top of that come the Royal Opera House, five major orchestras, the Wigmore Hall and the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.

Antwerp has real quality on a smaller scale. Opera Ballet Vlaanderen performs in the historic opera house, the deSingel arts campus puts on contemporary dance, and AMUZ presents early music in a Baroque church. Most of the theatre is in Dutch, so for many visitors its music and dance matter more.

Neither city is a place to rest, but London has more to offer when you want a break. The surviving Victorian Turkish baths in Bayswater and at Ironmonger Row have steam rooms under tiled vaults, the grand hotels run full spas, and the thermal waters of Bath are an easy train ride away. A cold dip in the Hampstead ponds is another local way to switch off.

Antwerp has no historic baths. Its Flemish sauna complexes lie mostly in the suburbs and need a car, so unwinding there usually means a park or a long afternoon in a brown café.