Baden-Baden or Interlaken?

Neither is a beach destination, but Interlaken at least offers proper swimming. In July and August Lake Thun warms to about 21°C at the grassy lidos of Neuhaus and along the shore towards Spiez, and the glacial turquoise of Lake Brienz at Bönigen is striking if cold, all beneath snow peaks.

Baden-Baden has only gravel pits on the Rhine plain and outdoor pools for a hot afternoon. Its water is thermal, meant for soaking rather than swimming.

Baden-Baden eats better. It sits in Baden's wine country, with Flammkuchen, venison and Black Forest cherry gateau on the menus, French touches from across the Rhine, and Riesling and Pinot Noir taverns in Varnhalt and Neuweier just outside town. Some of Germany's most celebrated restaurants are a short drive away in the northern Black Forest.

Interlaken feeds hungry hikers with fondue, rösti and international cooking that is reliable but rarely worth remembering. Its best meals are up the mountain, on a hut terrace above Mürren or with cheese bought straight from an Alpine dairy.

This is where Baden-Baden pulls well ahead. The town is the sight: the gilded Kurhaus casino rooms, the Trinkhalle colonnade, hillside villas and Roman bath ruins, plus the Frieder Burda and Kunsthalle galleries and the house where Brahms spent his summers, enough for a full day or two.

Interlaken offers a stroll past the grand hotels on the Höheweg and the old timber houses of Unterseen, and not much more. For museums and historic architecture you take the train to Bern or Thun.

Both towns go quiet early, but in different ways. Baden-Baden dresses up for the Kurhaus casino, hotel bars and wine bars with an older crowd, while Interlaken has backpacker pubs, sports bars and a couple of basement clubs near the hostels, livelier in summer and the ski season, before early mountain starts empty the streets.

Interlaken is one of the great mountain bases in Europe, with the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, the waterfalls of Lauterbrunnen and the Jungfraujoch at 3,454m all reached by rail. Lifts make high trails easy, and paragliding, canyoning, rafting and winter skiing at Wengen and Mürren are all run from town.

Baden-Baden's Black Forest is fine country in its own right, with the Merkur funicular, the Battert cliffs, the dark Mummelsee and the Hornisgrinde moorland. But it is wooded upland for gentle walks and autumn colour, not high Alpine drama.

Both make excellent bases, and the difference lies in direction. From Baden-Baden you cross a border and several centuries: Strasbourg and the Alsace wine villages, Heidelberg's castle, Freiburg's minster and the UNESCO sites at Speyer and Maulbronn, several of them far easier with a car.

Interlaken's outings stay in Switzerland and run on rail and water: arcaded Bern, Thun's castle above the Aare, steamer stops at Spiez and Oberhofen, Ballenberg's open-air museum and Lucerne over the Brünig Pass.

Interlaken works better with children. Cog railways, gondolas and lake steamers are an adventure in themselves, summit stations have playgrounds and summer toboggan runs, and the St Beatus caves and Ballenberg's farm animals rarely fail, though wet days are hard to fill.

Baden-Baden is safe and calm but built for adults, and the Friedrichsbad turns young children away. Families tend to use it as a quiet base and spend their days at Europa-Park, about an hour south, or the Karlsruhe zoo.

Interlaken is the easier place to manage without a car. Its flat centre links two stations, and the Bernese Oberland railways, cog lines, gondolas and steamers connect so neatly that the whole Jungfrau region opens up, though the busiest summer trains can be packed.

Baden-Baden's compact centre is walkable, if steep in places, but the station sits out in Oos, a bus ride away. Trains to Karlsruhe and Freiburg are easy, while the Black Forest High Road, the Rebland villages and Alsace really call for a car.

Baden-Baden has the more polished browsing, with jewellers, watchmakers, fashion boutiques and delicatessens along Sophienstraße and Lange Straße aimed at a well-off spa clientele. Interlaken's Höheweg is a tour-group strip of watch stores, army knives, chocolate and outdoor gear, with Brienz woodcarving the one craft worth seeking out. Neither suits a dedicated shopping trip, though Baden-Baden has Strasbourg close at hand.

Baden-Baden is the cheaper of the two, because its everyday side is priced in German terms: simple guesthouses, Rebland wine taverns, bakeries and local buses are all reasonable. The cost comes from the grand hotels that set the town's tone and from paying for each session at the Friedrichsbad or Caracalla, so a stay built around the baths still mounts up.

In Interlaken, rooms, meals and drinks run at full Swiss levels. The trains and cable cars that are the whole point of coming add heavily to every day, with the ride up to the Jungfraujoch the biggest cost of all, and paragliding or canyoning adds more. Hostels, regional passes and supermarket picnics soften the blow, but there is no budget way to see the region properly.

Baden-Baden is a genuine classical music town. The Festspielhaus, one of Germany's largest opera and concert houses, brings leading orchestras and opera productions, the town's philharmonic plays in the Kurhaus and the small nineteenth-century theatre stages drama, all in a place where Brahms and Clara Schumann worked.

Interlaken's offer is seasonal and folkloric: the amateur open-air William Tell in the woods each summer, yodelling and alphorn evenings, and the occasional Kursaal concert. Bern's theatre and orchestra are the nearest serious alternative.

Wellness is Baden-Baden's whole reason for being. The Friedrichsbad's silent, unclothed circuit of hot rooms and scrubs and the large Caracalla pools and saunas draw on springs the Romans used, and the town around them is set to rest.

Interlaken has no springs, only hotel spas and a public wellness area, and its centre is geared to activity. Calm comes instead from steamer crossings and quiet nights in the lakeside villages or up in Wengen or Mürren.