Belgrade or Budapest?

Neither city is a beach destination, but Belgrade has the better swim. Ada Ciganlija gives it a real summer lake on the Sava, with kilometres of gravel shore and lifeguards, a short ride from the centre. The sandy Lido on Great War Island, reached by boat, is a wilder alternative.

In Budapest, swimming in the city means the open-air lidos, with Palatinus on Margaret Island the classic: lawns and pools, but no open water. For a lake you take the train to Lake Velence or travel further to Balaton, so a swim becomes an outing.

The two are evenly matched, and both kitchens are rich and meaty, but they lean in different directions. Belgrade's centres on the grill and the kafana: ćevapi and pljeskavica with kajmak, burek for breakfast and fruit brandy at long tables in Skadarlija and Zemun.

Budapest cooks with paprika, in goulash, fisherman's soup and chicken paprikash, and adds a coffee-house tradition of layered cakes. It also has a deeper wine culture built on Tokaji and Eger, and a more ambitious modern restaurant scene. Vegetarians will find the choice narrow in both.

Belgrade's sights are worth seeing but modest. Kalemegdan's layered walls above the meeting of the two rivers, the vast Temple of Saint Sava and the Museum of Yugoslavia are the highlights. The rest is a patchwork of Habsburg Zemun, socialist New Belgrade and Ottoman traces, and two or three days covers it.

Budapest is on another level. The Parliament, the Castle District and the Chain Bridge make the Danube front a landmark in itself. The Museum of Fine Arts, the Dohány Street Synagogue, Andrássy Avenue and the Art Nouveau buildings of Pest add several more days of serious sightseeing.

Both cities are made for going out, but the nights feel different. Belgrade's signature is the splav, a floating club on the Sava or Danube, where people book tables, order by the bottle and dress up, and nights run until dawn. In winter the scene moves into the bars of Dorćol and basement clubs.

Budapest's centre is the ruin bars of the old Jewish Quarter: rambling courtyard tenements filled with mismatched furniture and several rooms of music. Cheap drinks draw stag and student groups. For something calmer, head to the wine bars of District V.

Both cities have gentle green surroundings rather than drama, but Budapest has more within easy reach. The forested Buda Hills, with their lookout towers, a cogwheel railway and caves carved by thermal water, start at the edge of the western districts, and the Danube Bend offers proper ridge walks an hour away.

Belgrade's outdoors are mainly along its rivers: long promenades for walking and cycling, the heron-filled wetland of Great War Island, and the wooded hill of Avala. Fruška Gora's vineyard paths are the nearest real hiking.

From Belgrade the easy trip is north to Novi Sad and its Petrovaradin fortress, under an hour by fast train. You can add the baroque town of Sremski Karlovci and the Fruška Gora monasteries. The Danube fortresses and Roman Viminacium to the south-east really need a car or a tour.

Budapest has the wider choice and easier links. Suburban trains reach Szentendre and Gödöllő, and the Danube Bend strings together Visegrád's citadel and Esztergom's basilica. Eger's castle and cellars, Hollókő and Pannonhalma abbey are around two hours away.

Belgrade welcomes children warmly, but it has little built for them. Kalemegdan's ramparts, tanks and small zoo, plus a summer day at Ada Ciganlija, are the main outings. Busy traffic and crowded pavements make pushchairs hard work.

Budapest gives families much more to fill a week. There is the old City Park zoo, the Children's Railway run by schoolchildren in the Buda Hills, the Palace of Wonders science centre and lidos with wave pools. The trams are also easier with a pushchair.

Belgrade's main sights are close enough to walk between, from Kalemegdan down Knez Mihailova to Skadarlija, though the streets climb steeply up from the rivers. To reach Zemun or New Belgrade you depend on crowded trams, trolleybuses and buses that get stuck in traffic. There is no metro, so many visitors simply take taxis.

Budapest is far easier to get around. Central Pest is flat. One tram runs along the embankment past Parliament and works as a sightseeing ride, and others circle the Grand Boulevard through the night. The short metro is simple to learn and includes continental Europe's oldest underground line. Ferries and the funicular cover the river and the castle hill.

Belgrade is better for browsing than for a shopping spree, and its best buys are local. Knez Mihailova and the big riverside malls mostly carry familiar chains. The things worth packing are honey, ajvar, cheese and a bottle of rakija from the Kalenić or Zeleni Venac markets, clothes from the young designers' boutiques in Dorćol and Vračar, or embroidered textiles and opanci, the traditional leather shoes, from the shops around Kalemegdan.

Budapest gives you more to choose from, and more things that last. Belgrade's strengths are food gifts and fashion from young designers. Budapest adds fine porcelain from the old Herend and Zsolnay factories, the designer labels along Andrássy Avenue that Belgrade largely lacks, and the stalls of the Ecseri flea market, full of old textiles and relics of the communist years. Shopping still fills an afternoon rather than a whole trip, but you are more likely to come home with something to keep on a shelf than something to eat.

Belgrade is the cheaper stay. Kafana meals, terrace coffee and taxis cost little, and much of the sightseeing is free. Your main expense is a central bed in Dorćol, which is priced more like Central Europe.

Budapest is affordable by Western standards, with cheap transport and wine, but it is not a budget city. Restaurants around Váci utca and the Basilica, and the grand cafés, charge for their setting, so set lunch menus in residential districts make the biggest saving.

Belgrade has a solid stage of its own: opera and ballet at the National Theatre, the Philharmonic at Kolarac, and the BITEF and BEMUS festivals in autumn. Its most characteristic sound, though, is tamburica bands playing at kafana tables.

Budapest is one of Europe's great music cities. It has the neo-Renaissance State Opera House, the Art Nouveau hall of the Liszt Academy, the national concert hall at Müpa and church concerts most nights, plus a theatre of its own for operetta.

This is the widest gap between the two cities. Belgrade has no bathing tradition: rest there means hotel spas, slow coffees on a terrace or a quiet afternoon by the lake, against a loud centre and late nights.

Budapest sits on more than a hundred hot springs. You can soak in the steaming outdoor pools of the Széchenyi, under the mosaics of the Gellért, beneath the Ottoman domes of Rudas and Király, or among locals at the Lukács. An afternoon in the baths can set the pace for a whole stay.