Basel or Ghent?

Neither city has a beach, but Basel copes better with a hot day. Its answer is the Rhine: you walk upstream along the Kleinbasel bank and float back past the Münster, and in August the water is often above 20°C. The current is strong, so this is for confident swimmers only.

Ghent's swimming means the supervised lake at the Blaarmeersen, or an hour on the train to Ostend and a cooler, greyer, windier North Sea. Both are fine for a day out, but neither is part of daily city life the way the Rhine is.

Ghent gives you more reason to plan your meals. It has dishes of its own, such as waterzooi, mussels with frites and grey shrimp croquettes, and a beer culture of Trappist and lambic poured in old cafés. Vegetarians are unusually well looked after.

Basel eats well, but much of what it serves is borrowed from Alsace and Baden. The Markthalle is the best casual stop, and Läckerli are the local treat. Many locals find the better-value meals across the border.

Both are rich in culture but in different ways. Basel is a museum city first: the Kunstmuseum's Holbeins, the Beyeler, Tinguely and the Vitra campus, along with modern buildings by Herzog & de Meuron.

Ghent is about the townscape and one masterpiece. The guildhalls of the Graslei, the moated Gravensteen and the three towers in a row lead to the van Eyck altarpiece in St Bavo's. Plan a day or so longer for Basel.

Ghent is the livelier place to go out. Its university fills the Overpoort's bars in term time, and the cafés around the Vrijdagmarkt and Oudburg are made for long evenings over strong beer. The Gentse Feesten turns July into ten days of late nights.

Basel's evenings are gentler. In summer people drink at the riverside buvettes, and through the year there are bars near the Kaserne and a few clubs in old harbour buildings, all at Swiss prices. Its one wild moment is Fasnacht, which starts at four in the morning in late winter.

Basel has real hill country on three sides: the Jura just to the south, the Vosges to the west and the Black Forest, with summits above 1,400m, within an hour. There are marked trails, winter walks and some light skiing.

Ghent's surroundings are flat and farmed. The best it offers is cycling along the Leie through Sint-Martens-Latem, birdwatching at the Bourgoyen-Ossemeersen wetland and the polders towards the Dutch border. That makes for pleasant days on a bike, but there are no hills.

Both cities make outstanding bases, and what differs is the kind of day out. From Basel you can cross borders and change scenery: the wine villages and Colmar in Alsace, Freiburg in Germany, Lucerne and Bern, and the Rhine Falls.

Ghent's trips are a dense run of great Flemish art cities. Bruges is under half an hour away and Brussels and Antwerp are close behind, with Ypres and the First World War battlefields further out. The hops are shorter from Ghent, and the landscapes more varied from Basel.

Basel is the easier city with children. The Zolli, one of Europe's best zoos, is a short walk from the station, and the little river ferries pulled across by the current are a treat. Trams take prams without fuss, and Europa-Park is about an hour away.

Ghent has the Gravensteen's battlements, canal boats and the toys at the House of Alijn, but its zoo is in Antwerp and cobbles are hard work with a pushchair. One thing Ghent does better is swimming: the Blaarmeersen lake lets children in the water, which Basel's Rhine does not.

Both centres are easy to walk, but Basel's transport goes further. Its green trams cross into Germany and France, hotel guests ride free, and the station has direct trains to three countries.

Ghent keeps cars out of its centre and gets around by bike, with bike lanes everywhere and rentals easy to find. Gent-Sint-Pieters station is a twenty-minute walk from the sights, though, and wet cobbles need care.

Neither city is worth the trip for shopping, and the two lean different ways. Basel is the more polished, with Swiss watches, jewellers and chocolatiers along Freie Strasse and one of Switzerland's prettier Christmas markets by the Münster.

Ghent is more informal: vintage around the Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat, independent design on the Serpentstraat, the Sint-Jacobs flea market and Sunday flowers on the Kouter. Cuberdons and mustard make the best take-home buys.

Ghent is much easier on the wallet. It is not cheap, since dinners with a few Belgian beers add up, but frites stands, bakeries, set lunches and free churches keep the days reasonable. Small hotels and guesthouses are moderately priced for most of the year.

Basel is among the most expensive cities in Europe for rooms, meals and museum tickets, and the trade fairs make it worse. The free transport card helps, and many visitors eat, shop or even sleep across the border.

The two are closely matched, each with stages far stronger than its size suggests. Basel's strength is classical music and opera: Theater Basel puts on opera, ballet and drama under one roof, the Stadtcasino has fine acoustics, and the city has a long early-music tradition. It goes quiet in July and August.

Ghent has a share of the Flemish national opera, the early music of De Bijloke in a medieval hospital, and NTGent's theatre, which is mostly in Dutch. Summer is when Ghent pulls ahead, with free stages across the centre during the Gentse Feesten.

Basel is the better choice for a restful trip with proper bathing. The saline thermal baths at Rheinfelden are about twenty minutes away, the mineral pools of Badenweiler and Bad Krozingen are just over the border, and the calm riverside does the rest.

Ghent has only private saunas and hotel spas. Its quiet comes from the enclosed gardens of the beguinages, canal walks along the Coupure and slow afternoons on café terraces.