Baden-Baden or Chamonix?

Neither town is a place for a swimming vacation, and both treat a swim as a hot-afternoon extra. Baden-Baden offers outdoor pools and the flooded gravel pits of the Rhine plain, which are flat and practical but nothing to travel for.

Chamonix has slightly more appealing water. Lac de Passy has a grassy, sandy shore with Mont Blanc behind it, and the clear water of Lake Annecy makes a fine summer day out. Both lakes are only really swimmable in July and August.

These two eat about equally well, but they eat very differently. Baden-Baden's strength is wine and a French-tinged regional cuisine, with Riesling and Pinot Noir from the Rebland villages, venison, Flammkuchen and the famous cherry gateau, plus top-flight restaurants a drive away in the northern Black Forest.

Chamonix is all melted cheese and mountain terraces: fondue, raclette and tartiflette, eaten at refuges facing the glaciers or put together as a picnic from the town's cheese shops. Expect resort sameness in town and a lot of closures between seasons.

Baden-Baden has far more to see. The Kurhaus casino rooms, the Trinkhalle colonnade, the hillside villas and the Roman bath ruins make up a complete nineteenth-century spa town. Add the Frieder Burda and Kunsthalle galleries, the Fabergé museum, Brahms's summer house and the Russian church, and you have a full day or two of sightseeing.

Chamonix's heritage is narrower but has character: the birthplace of alpinism, host of the first Winter Olympics, and home to the Musée Alpin and the climbers' cemetery. It is worth a morning, after which you will be looking at the peaks again.

Chamonix is clearly livelier after dark. Après-ski starts in the late afternoon, then the crowd moves to a lane of bars in the old town where guides, seasonal workers and visitors stay out late, and a couple of small clubs run into the early hours. It is young, loud and mostly English-speaking, and much quieter in summer and between seasons.

Baden-Baden's evenings are dressed-up and early. The gilded casino is the signature night out, followed by a glass in a hotel or wine bar. Anyone wanting to dance has to travel to Karlsruhe or Strasbourg.

Baden-Baden has pleasant upland right on its doorstep. The Merkur funicular, the Battert cliffs, the fir forests and the Black Forest High Road up to the Hornisgrinde moorland make for good walking and biking, and they are at their best in autumn.

Chamonix is in another category. The Mont Blanc massif rises almost 4km above the valley, and lifts carry you to 3,842m on the Aiguille du Midi. Glaciers, serious skiing, the Vallée Blanche, via ferrata and paragliding are all part of an ordinary day here. Baden-Baden's walks top out on wooded ridges and moorland. In Chamonix the trails are only getting started at that height, with the glaciers and granite needles still far above.

Baden-Baden is the stronger base for excursions. Within about an hour you can be at Strasbourg's cathedral, among the Alsace wine villages, at Colmar, or at Heidelberg's castle and Freiburg's minster, and the UNESCO sites of Speyer and Maulbronn are close by too. The choice is wide and the roads are flat and quick.

Chamonix's outings have the novelty of crossing borders: Courmayeur and Roman Aosta through the tunnel, Martigny by mountain railway, and Annecy and Geneva just over an hour away. Beyond those, mountain roads slow you down and the remaining options are mostly other resorts.

Chamonix suits active families better. It has nursery slopes and sledging in winter, and in summer there are lake walks, a luge, treetop courses, the Merlet animal park and the little red train to the Mer de Glace, all within the town's own valley. The catches are cost, altitude limits for toddlers and little to do on wet days.

Baden-Baden is safe and calm, but it is built for adults. The Friedrichsbad turns away young children, so families mostly use the town as a quiet base for Europa-Park and Karlsruhe's zoo.

Chamonix is a little easier to get around without a car. Its flat centre has the main lift stations in town, and buses and the Mont Blanc Express run free along the valley with the guest card, though ski buses are crowded and evening services thin out.

Baden-Baden's centre is compact but hilly in places, and the station sits out in Oos, a bus ride away. Trains are good for Karlsruhe and Freiburg, but the High Road, the wine villages and Alsace really need a car.

Baden-Baden has the more polished shopping streets. Sophienstraße and Lange Straße are lined with jewellers, watchmakers, fashion boutiques and delicatessens, made for a leisurely browse, though there are no department stores or markets.

Chamonix is narrower but expert in its field. Generations-old outdoor shops make it a place where climbers and skiers buy serious equipment, and alongside them are Savoyard cheese, génépi and crystals from the massif. For anything else, both towns send you to a bigger neighbour.

Neither is cheap, but Baden-Baden is the easier of the two on the wallet. Guesthouses, wine taverns, bakeries and buses are sensibly priced by German standards, and the bill mainly climbs if you stay grand and bathe every day.

Chamonix adds costly extras to already high room rates: lift passes, the big cable cars, guides and paragliding flights. Free valley transport, self-catering, picnics and trails that start at the valley floor do help, as does avoiding the peak winter and summer weeks.

Baden-Baden is far ahead for anyone who wants a night at the opera or a symphony concert. The Festspielhaus, one of Germany's largest houses, brings international orchestras and opera productions, and the town also has its own philharmonic in the Kurhaus and a small nineteenth-century theatre. Brahms and Clara Schumann both worked here.

Chamonix offers summer jazz, some of it played high in the mountains, plus church concerts and mountain film nights, but there is no regular season. For opera you would have to drive to Geneva.

This is Baden-Baden's defining strength. It has Roman-era hot springs, the domed Friedrichsbad with its silent sequence of rooms and pools, and the large Caracalla complex next door, all in a town that runs at a deliberately unhurried pace.

Chamonix's version of relaxation comes after a hard day. Its Italian-style day spa has hot outdoor pools facing the glaciers, and the thermal springs of Saint-Gervais are close by. But early starts, climbers and high-season crowds mean the town itself is rarely restful.