Basel or Luxembourg?

Neither city has a beach, but Basel's river makes up for it far better. On summer afternoons, locals walk upstream along the Kleinbasel bank and float back past the old town, then dry off on the gravel banks. Swimming here is part of ordinary city life rather than an excursion. The current is strong, though, so it is for confident swimmers.

In Luxembourg, a swim means going out of town. The bathing spots on the Upper Sûre reservoir are about an hour north, and the gravel-pit lakes at Remerschen are in the Moselle valley. Both are pleasant on a hot day in July or August, but most visitors never get to them.

The two cities are on a par for food, and both borrow heavily from their neighbours. Basel's kitchen leans towards Alsace and Baden, with tarte flambée, choucroute and Baden wines. The Markthalle and the market on Marktplatz are the easy casual stops, and locals often cross the border for cheaper meals.

Luxembourg's better restaurants are mostly French, and decades of Portuguese and Italian cooking run through its neighbourhood places. Its real edge is wine: Moselle Riesling and crémant are poured by the glass everywhere, and nothing in Basel matches that.

Basel has much more to see inside. The Kunstmuseum's Old Masters, the Beyeler's modern art in its Renzo Piano building, the Tinguely and the Antikenmuseum add up to a museum city that needs three or four days. Its old town is a pleasant setting rather than the main event, with the red Münster, the painted Rathaus and the guild lanes of Spalenberg.

Luxembourg works the other way round. Its setting is the main sight: a UNESCO-listed fortress on sandstone cliffs, the Bock casemates and the view from the Chemin de la Corniche down to the Grund. MUDAM and the national museum are worth an afternoon, but two days covers the city.

Evenings are quiet in both cities, so the difference is in timing. Basel's best nights are in summer, when people drink on the river steps by the Kleinbasel kiosks until late. Clubs in old harbour buildings keep electronic music going at weekends, and Fasnacht turns the whole city into a three-day procession of drums and lanterns.

Luxembourg's nights are busiest on Thursdays and Fridays, before many residents leave for the weekend. Bars and clubs are packed into the old brewery at Rives de Clausen, and the crowd is mostly young international professionals. A glass of crémant on a terrace is a more typical evening.

The cities are evenly matched for the outdoors, but the green starts in different places. In Luxembourg it begins in the centre itself: wooded gorges along the Pétrusse and Alzette have paths along the bottom. The Müllerthal's mossy rock passages are half an hour away, and the Ardennes lie further north.

Basel itself is flat and urban. Its strength is the three upland areas around it: the Jura ridges, the Black Forest with summits above 1,400m and light skiing in winter, and the Vosges. The Rhine paths make easy cycling into Germany and France.

Both cities sit on borders, but Basel has the longer list. Colmar and the Alsace wine villages, Freiburg, Lucerne, Bern and Zurich are each about an hour away by fast train, Strasbourg is a little further, and the Rhine Falls take about an hour and a half. You could spend a week on day trips without repeating yourself.

Luxembourg's outings are good but smaller in scale. Roman Trier and Metz, with its Gothic cathedral, are each under an hour away. Closer to home there are Vianden's castle, Echternach, the Family of Man exhibition at Clervaux, and afternoons of wine tasting in Moselle villages such as Remich and Schengen.

Basel has more to keep children busy. The Zolli is one of Europe's best zoos and sits a short walk from the station. The natural history and toy museums cover a rainy morning, the little ferries pulled across by the current are a treat, and Europa-Park is about an hour away by car.

Luxembourg is just as calm and safe, but it offers less. The casemate tunnels and ramparts are the highlight for children, and the Parc Merveilleux at Bettembourg is the only attraction built for families. With no zoo or theme park, it suits a family stay of two or three days rather than a week.

Basel is the smoother of the two to move around. The old town and both banks of the Rhine are flat and easy to cover on foot, and the four small river ferries make a crossing part of the walk. Green trams handle the rest of the city and hotel guests ride them free. Some lines carry on into Germany and France, and the main station has direct trains across Switzerland and into both neighbours, so no day trip needs a car.

Luxembourg's network is free for everyone: trams, buses and second-class trains alike, with trains out to Vianden, Clervaux and the Moselle. The old town is compact and pleasant to walk. The city is built on several levels, though, so it helps to know where the public lifts down to the Grund and Pfaffenthal are, and the funicular up to Kirchberg. Roads fill with cross-border commuters at rush hour, which is another reason to leave the car behind.

Neither city is somewhere people travel to shop, and both are short on bargains. Basel offers Swiss watches, chocolatiers and Läckerli on Freie Strasse, small design shops in Spalenberg and a pretty Christmas market by the Münster. Luxembourg has luxury fashion along the Grand-Rue, the Villeroy & Boch porcelain outlet, and Moselle crémant to take home.

Both cities are expensive, but Basel is the harder on the wallet. Hotels, meals, drinks and museum tickets all cost what you would expect in Switzerland, and rooms become scarce during big trade fairs such as Art Basel. The free travel card for hotel guests and cheaper meals over the border in Germany and France help only so much.

In Luxembourg the savings add up a little more. Transport is free for all, several museums charge no entry, wine by the glass is reasonable, and room rates sometimes drop at weekends. Staying in Trier or Metz and coming in by train is a common way to save.

Basel creates more of its own performances. Theater Basel stages opera, ballet and drama in house and is known well beyond Switzerland for bold productions. The Sinfonieorchester plays at the Stadtcasino, and the city's early-music tradition adds historical concerts. The season goes quiet in July and August.

Luxembourg's Philharmonie is a superb hall with a resident orchestra, but much of the programme there and at the Grand Théâtre comes from visiting companies. In summer, the open-air concerts at Neimënster in the Grund fill the gap left by Basel's break.

Both cities are calm places with no bathing tradition of their own, so a spa day means a short trip out. From Basel you have more choice: the saline baths at Rheinfelden are about twenty minutes away, the German spa towns of southern Baden lie just over the border, and Baden-Baden is possible as a longer day. From Luxembourg there is essentially one destination, the thermal park at Mondorf-les-Bains, about half an hour away.