Baden-Baden or The Hague?

Only The Hague has a beach worth the name. Scheveningen is a wide stretch of sand with a pier, a promenade and summer pavilions, and the quieter dunes at Kijkduin are nearby. The North Sea stays cold, though, so expect to sunbathe and take short swims rather than spend whole days in the water.

Baden-Baden is far inland. On a hot day you can swim in the gravel lakes of the Rhine plain or in outdoor pools. The town's real water is the hot springs.

The two are evenly matched, but they offer very different kinds of food. Baden-Baden eats from the land around it: Flammkuchen, venison, Black Forest ham and cherry gateau, with Riesling and Pinot Noir poured in the taverns of the Rebland villages. The town itself has a small choice, mostly hotel dining rooms and cafés, so ambitious eaters head into the hills, where some of Germany's most celebrated restaurants are.

In The Hague, the dish to seek out is Indonesian, from a full rijsttafel to a quick plate of rendang. Add a small Chinatown, herring from street carts and fish by Scheveningen harbour, and you have a city to eat around rather than one for wine.

The Hague has more to see, and its best sights are world-class. The Mauritshuis alone, with Girl with a Pearl Earring and View of Delft, justifies a visit. Around it are the Binnenhof, the Peace Palace, the Kunstmuseum's Mondrians and the Panorama Mesdag, enough for two or three full days.

In Baden-Baden, the main sight is the town itself: an intact Belle Époque spa with the Kurhaus, the Trinkhalle and villas on the hillsides. The Museum Frieder Burda, Brahms's summer house and the Roman bath ruins round it out, but most visitors have seen it all in a day or two.

Neither town is a party destination, but The Hague has more going on after dark. The terraces on the Plein and the bars of the Grote Markt fill up at weekends, and on summer evenings the Scheveningen beach pavilions move from sundowners to dancing.

Evenings in Baden-Baden mean dressing up for the Kurhaus casino or a quiet glass in a hotel bar, and the streets are calm well before midnight. For clubs, people go to Karlsruhe or Strasbourg from one, and to Rotterdam or Amsterdam from the other.

Baden-Baden has the better outdoors. You can take the Merkur funicular up for views as far as the Vosges, climb on the Battert cliffs, walk through vineyards on the Panoramaweg, or drive the High Road past the Mummelsee to the Hornisgrinde moorland above 1,100m. There is mountain biking in summer and modest skiing in winter.

The Hague's nature is coastal: the sand hills and ponds of Meijendel, the old Haagse Bos woods and long beach walks. It is flat and good for cycling, and kitesurfers like the wind, but there is nothing to climb.

Both are excellent bases, and The Hague has the edge. Delft and Leiden are about a quarter of an hour away, and Rotterdam, Gouda, Haarlem, Utrecht and Amsterdam are all reachable by train with no planning. Kinderdijk's windmills and the Keukenhof gardens are close as well.

From Baden-Baden, the trips cross a border: Strasbourg and the Alsace wine route, plus Heidelberg, Freiburg, Speyer and Maulbronn. They are just as rewarding, but they are further apart, and a car helps.

The Hague has far more for children. Madurodam's miniature Netherlands, the sea aquarium, Museon and a big sandy beach are all within the city, and Duinrell is just outside it. Rainy days are the main drawback.

Baden-Baden is pleasant for families, with the funicular and forest paths, but the town is made for adults, and young children are not allowed in the Friedrichsbad. Europa-Park, an hour away, is the main reason families stay here.

The Hague is easier to get around. The flat centre can be walked in minutes, frequent trams run out to the beach and the Peace Palace, cycle lanes are everywhere, and two stations put other Dutch cities within easy reach.

Baden-Baden's centre is small but hilly, and the station is in Oos, a bus ride out of town. Trains cover Karlsruhe and Freiburg, but the Black Forest and Alsace are hard to explore without a car.

Baden-Baden's shopping fits into two polished streets. Sophienstraße and Lange Straße are lined with jewellers, watchmakers, boutiques and delicatessens for a well-off spa crowd, and browsing them makes a pleasant slow afternoon. There are no department stores or markets, and the souvenirs are cuckoo clocks and local wine.

The Hague gives a shopper far more ground to cover. Antique dealers and galleries line the Denneweg and Noordeinde, the glass-roofed Passage from the 1880s makes a covered stroll, and Grote Marktstraat has the chains and a large department store. Best of all is the Haagse Markt, piled with fabrics, spices and produce from the city's many communities, with a character nothing in Baden-Baden can match.

Both are expensive, and the difference between them is small. In Baden-Baden the grand hotels and paying for every bath push costs up, while guesthouses, wine taverns and bakeries keep a simpler stay reasonable.

In The Hague, savings come from timing and eating. Central hotels are often easier to find at a fair price at weekends, once government visitors leave, and Indonesian and Surinamese eateries serve filling meals for far less than a Dutch restaurant.

Classical music and opera set the tone in Baden-Baden, and contemporary dance does the same in The Hague. The Festspielhaus, built into the old railway station and one of Germany's largest concert houses, brings in leading orchestras, soloists and opera productions. The town's philharmonic plays in the Kurhaus, and the small nineteenth-century theatre adds drama. Brahms and Clara Schumann both worked here, but there is little jazz or rock.

In The Hague, the performance to plan around is Nederlands Dans Theater on its home stage. The Residentie Orkest and the Royal Conservatory's early-music concerts cover classical music, the pop and rock venues are good for a city this size, and summer brings festivals on the beach. There is no resident opera company, and most of the drama at the Koninklijke Schouwburg is in Dutch.

Baden-Baden is one of Europe's great bathing towns. Its springs have been used since Roman times, the Friedrichsbad offers its domed, silent sequence of hot rooms, and Caracalla has thermal pools indoors and out. The whole town keeps a slow, restful pace around the baths.

The Hague's version of this is the Dutch day sauna, in large complexes on the outskirts where nudity is usually expected. The Kurhaus at Scheveningen recalls its bathing past, but none of its historic baths is still in use. The city is calm, but it has nothing that compares.