Baden-Baden or Paris?

Neither is a beach destination, and swimming in either means a cool-off rather than a seaside day. Baden-Baden has gravel-pit lakes on the Rhine plain and outdoor pools. Paris has sand-dressed riverbanks, swimming spots in the Seine and the Bassin de la Villette, handsome Art Deco pools, and real coast in Normandy about two hours away by train.

Baden-Baden eats well for a small town. You get Flammkuchen, venison, Black Forest ham and cherry gateau, with Riesling and Pinot Noir from the Rebland slopes just outside town. The centre, though, is mostly hotel dining and cake-and-coffee cafés, and the region's celebrated restaurants are a drive away in the Black Forest.

Paris is in another league. Food is part of everyday life there, from the Marché d'Aligre and the boulangerie on every corner to natural-wine bars and the inventive neo-bistros of the eastern arrondissements. There is also couscous in Belleville and pho in the 13th. A food lover could eat for weeks without repeating a meal.

Baden-Baden's main sight is the town itself. It is a preserved Belle Époque spa resort with the Kurhaus, the Trinkhalle and hillside villas, plus Roman bath ruins, the Museum Frieder Burda and the Brahms house. Together they make a rewarding day or two.

Paris could fill weeks. The Louvre, the Orsay, the Orangerie and the Musée Rodin each outrank anything in Baden-Baden, and Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle are Gothic masterpieces. The Haussmann boulevards and the Marais townhouses turn every walk into sightseeing. The price is queues, so booking ahead matters.

An evening in Baden-Baden means dressing up for the gilded casino in the Kurhaus, then a hotel or wine bar, and quiet streets by late evening. For anything livelier, people go to Karlsruhe or Strasbourg.

Paris has a real night scene. Evenings start on a terrace and move east to the bars of Oberkampf, the Canal Saint-Martin and Belleville, with cocktail bars in South Pigalle, the Marais gay scene and house and techno clubs going until dawn. Expect selective doors and expensive drinks.

Here Baden-Baden comes out ahead. The northern Black Forest starts at the edge of town. The Merkur funicular, the Battert cliffs and the Panoramaweg lead into fir forest and vineyards, and the High Road climbs to the Mummelsee and the Hornisgrinde moorland, with mountain biking in summer and some skiing in winter.

Paris offers parks and gentler country. Walkers and runners use the Buttes-Chaumont, the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes, and the forest of Fontainebleau, with its climbing boulders, is a short train ride away. It is pleasant, but it is flat lowland compared with Baden-Baden's wooded upland.

Both make excellent bases, and Baden-Baden's position is one of its biggest assets. Strasbourg and the Alsace wine villages, Heidelberg, Freiburg, and the UNESCO sites of Speyer and Maulbronn are all about an hour away, though the Alsace and Black Forest outings are much easier with a car.

Paris has the longer and easier list, nearly all of it by train. Versailles, Fontainebleau, Chartres and Giverny are close, and fast trains put Reims and its Champagne houses, Rouen, the Loire châteaux and even Brussels within a day.

Baden-Baden is safe and calm, and children enjoy the funicular and the forest paths. But the Friedrichsbad does not admit young children and the mood is adult, so families tend to spend their days at Europa-Park, an hour south.

Paris gives children far more to do. Disneyland and Parc Astérix are close, the Cité des Sciences and the Jardin des Plantes galleries are in the city, and the Luxembourg has puppet shows and toy sailboats. The hard parts are metro stairs with pushchairs, small hotel rooms and long queues.

Baden-Baden's centre is small enough to walk, though some streets are steep. The station is a bus ride out in Oos, and the wine villages, the High Road and Alsace really need a car.

Paris is easier despite its size. The centre is one of the great walking cities, a metro station is rarely more than a few minutes away, and the RER reaches Versailles and the airports. A car is no help there. The drawbacks are stairs, packed rush-hour trains and pickpockets on the tourist lines.

Baden-Baden's shopping is refined but narrow. Sophienstraße and Lange Straße have jewellers, watchmakers and delicatessens for a wealthy spa crowd, but there are no department stores and few markets, and its own serious shoppers head to Strasbourg.

Paris is where luxury fashion began. It has the flagships on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Galeries Lafayette and Le Bon Marché, Marais vintage, the covered passages, the bouquinistes along the Seine and the Saint-Ouen flea market. You could build a whole trip around it.

Both are expensive, for different reasons. In Baden-Baden, the grand hotels and the fee at every bath visit add up, while guesthouses, wine taverns and bakeries stay reasonable.

In Paris, the costs are small central hotel rooms, terrace drinks and museum admissions. There are more ways to cut back, though: free permanent collections in the city's own museums, lunchtime set menus, riverside picnics and rooms in the outer arrondissements.

Baden-Baden has more classical music than its size suggests. The Festspielhaus, one of Germany's largest halls, brings international orchestras and opera, and the Kurhaus and the small nineteenth-century theatre add more, all tied to the town's links with Brahms and Clara Schumann. Beyond classical music, there is little.

Paris has everything Baden-Baden has, and much more besides. Opera and ballet play at the Garnier and the Bastille, there are concerts at the Philharmonie and in the Sainte-Chapelle, Molière at the Comédie-Française, jazz cellars on the rue des Lombards and cabaret in Pigalle.

Baden-Baden exists for this. You can follow the silent sequence of hot rooms and pools in the domed Friedrichsbad, spend an afternoon in the Caracalla saunas and outdoor pools, then walk slowly along the Lichtentaler Allee and go to bed early.

Paris has no springs of its own. Its best option is the tiled hammam of the Grande Mosquée, plus hotel day spas, and otherwise rest comes in short breaks on a terrace or a chair in the Luxembourg gardens. For a real wellness break, Baden-Baden is the obvious choice.