Bern or La Spezia?

Neither city has a beach in town, and the swimming is very different. In Bern it means the Aare: you walk upstream from the Marzili, jump in and let the cold green current carry you back. It is exciting for strong swimmers, and the season is over by early September. Lake Thun has calmer water.

La Spezia has the sea, though you go out of town to swim. Lerici and San Terenzo have sheltered sand and pebble, Palmaria has rocky spots with clear water, and Monterosso has a long sandy beach. The water is much warmer and the season longer, but August crowds and the many paid bathing establishments take some of the shine off.

La Spezia has the more interesting food. Farinata from wood ovens, mussels from the gulf, trofie with pesto and the white wines of the Cinque Terre all taste of the place, even if there is little fine dining or international choice.

Bern's cooking is hearty Swiss fare: the Berner Platte, rösti and fondue in old guildhall dining rooms and cellars under the arcades, with very good chocolate and Emmental cheese at the markets. It is reliable rather than exciting, and the bill is much higher.

For sights in the city itself, Bern is the stronger choice. The whole old town on its loop of the river is a World Heritage Site, with the Zytglogge, the Minster tower and the Federal Palace. The museums are good for a city this size, from the Klee collection to the Einstein flat on Kramgasse.

La Spezia is a nineteenth-century naval town of straight avenues and Liberty-style facades. The Museo Amedeo Lia and the prehistoric stele statues in the Castello San Giorgio are worth seeing, but the region's history is mostly out along the coast, not in the city.

Neither is a city for a big night out, but Bern has a little more going on after dark: cellar bars under the arcades, busy weekend streets near the station and the Reitschule for late, rough-edged parties. In La Spezia the evening is the aperitivo on Via del Prione or the Lerici waterfront, and most people go to bed early before a day on the trails.

Both are excellent bases for the outdoors, but the landscapes are very different. From Bern, the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau are about an hour away, with high-mountain hiking, cable cars and winter skiing. The Gurten, the Aare paths and the Emmental are there for gentler days.

La Spezia's outdoors is mostly the coast. There are the terraced cliffs and footpaths of the Cinque Terre national park, the loop walk on Palmaria and the pinewoods of Montemarcello, as well as kayaking and diving in the gulf. For mountains, the marble peaks of the Apuan Alps rise about an hour inland.

Bern's day trips are mostly towns and cities, strung across the Swiss rail network in every direction. Lucerne, Basel and Zurich are each about an hour away, and the Lavaux vineyard terraces above Lake Geneva are a little further. Medieval Fribourg, lakeside Murten, baroque Solothurn and Gruyères with its cheese dairies make shorter outings.

From La Spezia the outings mostly follow the shore. The Cinque Terre villages are minutes away on the coastal train, Portovenere is a short boat ride, and inland there are walled Sarzana, the Roman ruins of Luni, and Pisa and Lucca about an hour away. A week based in Bern feels like a tour of a whole country, with a change of language halfway. A week in La Spezia stays around one gulf and its coastline, with Tuscany for a change of scene.

Bern is the easier city with children. The bear park, the Dählhölzli zoo along the Aare, the animal dioramas at the Natural History Museum and the playground on the Gurten can fill several days. The Marzili has shallow pools for children, though the river itself is for strong swimmers only.

In La Spezia the best family days are on the water, with boat trips around Portovenere and calm beaches at San Terenzo and Lerici. There is no zoo or aquarium, and the main outings mean steep villages and crowded trains, so it suits older children better than toddlers.

Bern is one of the easiest cities to get around. You can walk across the centre in about twenty minutes, under cover of the arcades, trams and buses run on one fare system, and funiculars and a lift take you up and down between the river and the old town.

La Spezia's flat centre is just as easy to walk, and trains, buses and seasonal ferries link it to the coast. The problem is summer, when the coastal trains and village platforms are packed, so getting about takes more patience than in Bern.

Bern has the better shopping, though neither city is a place for fashion. The line of arcaded streets from Spitalgasse to Kramgasse has watch and chocolate shops, and the cellar shops of Gerechtigkeitsgasse sell antiques, design and crafts. La Spezia's Via del Prione is mostly everyday chains and shoe shops, and the best things to take home are edible: pesto, olive oil, Sciacchetrà and anchovies.

This is the biggest difference between the two. Bern is very expensive for almost everything, from plain hotels to a beer on a terrace. The tram and bus pass that hotels usually give guests helps, and so do free pleasures such as the bear park and the river paths.

La Spezia is mid-priced, with cheap local trains, fair-value everyday food and rooms that cost less than in the Cinque Terre villages. Summer rates, trail passes and bathing establishments push costs up, but even then a stay costs far less than in Bern.

Bern has more to see on any given evening. There is opera, ballet and German-language drama at the Stadttheater, the symphony orchestra at the Casino and new dance at the Dampfzentrale, plus a jazz festival in spring and the Gurtenfestival in July. La Spezia has the Teatro Civico's season and a summer of jazz and open-air concerts in piazzas and castle courtyards, but little the rest of the year, and for opera you have to go to Genoa or Pisa.

Bern is the better place for proper spa time. It has a large thermal bath complex with saunas and steam rooms on the western edge, a hammam-style spa in the old town and mountain spa hotels within reach in the Bernese Oberland, all in a city where Sundays are quiet.

La Spezia has no spa tradition of its own beyond hotel spas and the small thermal baths at Equi Terme an hour inland. Here the rest comes from the places, not from treatments: evenings on the seafront out of season, a long lunch in Tellaro and the quiet of Palmaria.