Austrian Alps or French Alps?

Neither has a coast, so swimming means lakes. Austria's Carinthian lakes, the Wörthersee, Millstätter See and their neighbours, warm up to the mid-20s in high summer, and towns like Velden run full lido summers with lawns and diving boards.

The French side has one excellent lake in Annecy, plus Lac du Bourget and the pebbly Lake Geneva shore, but the water is a little cooler and the small beaches crowd on summer weekends. For a real bathing stay, Carinthia is the better bet.

Both regions cook hearty mountain food, but the French side eats better. Savoyard cooking has a deeper larder: Reblochon and Beaufort bought at the farm, lake perch and féra, Savoie whites and Chartreuse, and Annecy's old-town markets to graze through.

Austria's Kaiserschmarrn, Gröstl and Käsespätzle are at their best on a hut terrace, and Salzburg's café cakes are a real pleasure, but day-to-day menus feel narrower. Both have top-end kitchens in their smartest resorts, and both repeat themselves in ordinary ski villages.

Austria has far more to see. Salzburg alone, with its fortress, cathedral, Residenz and Mozart's birthplace, outweighs any French Alpine town, and Innsbruck's Golden Roof and Hofkirche, Hallstatt's salt-mining heritage and the Admont abbey library add to it.

The French towns offer pleasant half days rather than a reason to travel: Annecy's canals and Palais de l'Isle, the ducal château in Chambéry, Grenoble's fine-arts museum and Briançon's Vauban walls.

Austrian après-ski is the louder and longer affair. In Ischgl, St Anton, Saalbach and Mayrhofen the huts are full of ski boots on tables and Schlager by late afternoon, and the village bars and clubs keep going deep into the night. Innsbruck's students keep a modest bar scene going through the rest of the year.

The French party crowd gathers in Val Thorens, Val d'Isère and Méribel, with Courchevel's expensive glamour and Chamonix's climbers' bars as the variations. Summer evenings in France are better spent on Annecy's lakeside terraces than in the resorts, many of which are asleep by ten.

This is the one area where neither side wins outright, as both rank among the great mountain landscapes of Europe. The difference is in character. France has the higher drama, with Mont Blanc, glacier access from the Aiguille du Midi and the vast linked ski areas of the Tarentaise.

Austria spreads its terrain more evenly, with the Grossglockner and Krimml waterfalls in the Hohe Tauern, valley after valley in Tyrol with staffed huts and marked trails, and lakes in the Salzkammergut and Carinthia for paddling between hikes.

Both offer good outings, and the difference lies in where they lead. From Salzburg and Innsbruck the trips stay largely Alpine and historic, Hallstatt, Bad Ischl, Hall in Tirol, Berchtesgaden, with Munich, the Bavarian castles and South Tyrol within reach.

The French bases look outward to cities and neighbours. Geneva is under an hour away, ferries cross Lake Geneva to Lausanne, and Lyon and Italy's Aosta valley are easy from Annecy and Chamonix, though the deep Tarentaise valleys leave little time for anything.

Austria is the easier place to take children. Its child-focused hotels with playrooms, pools and kids' clubs are a national speciality, resorts such as Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis are designed around young skiers, and summer lifts lead to adventure trails and toboggan runs, with Innsbruck's Alpine Zoo and the Hellbrunn trick fountains for rest days.

The French Alps do well with car-free resorts like Avoriaz and Flaine, strong ski schools and Annecy's shallow lake beaches, but there is less built purely for fun, and long transfers and altitude tire small children faster.

Moving around is noticeably simpler in Austria. Trains run along the Inn valley, over the Arlberg and into the Gastein valley, Postbus lines climb the side valleys, and guest cards often cover local buses, so a single-valley stay works without a car.

On the French side, arrival is the hurdle: a flight to Geneva, Lyon or Grenoble, then a transfer or drive, with snow chains on many winter roads. Trains reach Annecy, Chamonix and Bourg-Saint-Maurice, but summer touring between lakes and passes really needs a car.

Neither is a shopping destination, and both sell local character more than fashion. Austria's strength is traditional dress, with dirndls, loden and felt hats on Salzburg's Getreidegasse, plus Tyrolean wood carving, Wattens crystal and the December Christmas markets.

France leans towards technical gear and food: Chamonix's mountaineering shops, Opinel knives, Beaufort wheels and Génépi from Annecy's markets. Both have a small luxury enclave, Kitzbühel and Lech against Courchevel and Megève.

Neither region is cheap, but Austria is the gentler on the wallet. Half-board guesthouses, farm stays in quieter valleys and summer stays in Carinthia keep costs reasonable, and guest cards that bundle transport and lifts help further.

The big French resorts in school-vacation weeks are harder to budget for, with mountain lunches and resort drinks priced high and Courchevel among Europe's costliest addresses. Savings come from self-catering, low-season weeks and ordinary-priced towns such as Grenoble and Chambéry.

Here the gap is wide. The Salzburg Festival, Bregenz's floating opera stage on Lake Constance, the Schubertiade in Vorarlberg villages and Erl's opera seasons put Austria on the classical-music map, and Salzburg keeps concerts going through the year with Mozart Week and the Mozarteum.

The French Alps have Grenoble's arts centre and chamber orchestra, chamber music at Évian and summer concerts in mountain churches, but anyone wanting opera usually heads to Lyon or Geneva.

In Austria, thermal water and sauna culture run through the whole region. In France they are concentrated in a few spa towns. Bad Gastein's radon springs and healing gallery, the imperial spa of Bad Ischl and the Aqua Dome's outdoor pools facing the Ötztal peaks are only the headline names, because hotels in almost every valley have serious sauna worlds and quiet rooms.

France's strengths lie in Aix-les-Bains, Évian and Saint-Gervais in its wooded gorge, which suit a quiet cure, and upmarket ski hotels add pools with snow views. Away from those towns and Lake Annecy, the French resorts are built more for activity than for rest.