Bled or Salzburg?

Neither has a sea, so swimming means lake water, but in Bled the lake is the village itself. You can walk from your room to the lido below the castle cliff, the shallow western end near Velika Zaka or a rock along the shore path, and strong swimmers head out to the island. Bohinj adds a colder, wilder option nearby.

Salzburg's river is no place to swim. Bathing means an outing of half an hour or more to Fuschlsee, Wolfgangsee or Mondsee, or a pool on the edge of town. That makes a nice afternoon off, not a daily routine.

Salzburg is the better place to eat, even if it is no great food city. Its coffee houses, the Augustiner beer garden in Mülln, Salzburger Nockerl and the inns on the surrounding hills give you several days of good Austrian cooking, provided you avoid the tourist menus in the old town.

Bled's offer rests on kremšnita by the lake, hotel dining rooms, pizzerias and a few inns serving trout and žlikrofi. The better meals are in the valley farm inns, or an hour away in Ljubljana.

For sightseeing, Salzburg is the clear choice. The salt-rich prince-archbishops built a whole Baroque centre: the cathedral, the Residenz state rooms, Mirabell and the arcaded squares, with the Hohensalzburg fortress above. Add St Peter's rock-cut catacombs, the Mozart houses and Hellbrunn, and you have two or three full days.

Bled has a handful of memorable sights instead: the clifftop castle with its small museum and printing workshop, the pletna boat ride to the island church and its wishing bell, and the old spa villas along the shore. You will have seen them all by the end of the first day.

Neither place is for a big night out, but Salzburg at least has some evening life. Its beer halls fill up with locals at long wooden tables, and Rudolfskai and the streets around the university keep a few bars open late at weekends. Bled offers a terrace drink and a walk along the lit shore, and the village is asleep before midnight. Serious clubbing means Munich from Salzburg, or Ljubljana from Bled.

Both are excellent bases for the Alps, but the scenery works differently. In Bled you are on the edge of the Julian Alps: the level lake circuit, steep viewpoints such as Osojnica, Vintgar Gorge and Triglav National Park with Bohinj and Pokljuka nearby. Rafting and canyoning on the Sava and the drive over Vršič to the Soča valley add some adventure.

Salzburg puts the hills inside the city. You can walk the wooded Mönchsberg and Kapuzinerberg ridges, take the Untersberg cable car to limestone ridges at about 1,800m, or cycle along the Salzach. Further out are the sailing lakes of the Salzkammergut and Königssee in Berchtesgaden.

Salzburg has the richer choice. Hallstatt, the salt mines at Hallein and Berchtesgaden, the Werfen fortress, the imperial spa town of Bad Ischl and Munich by train add history and a big city to the lake scenery.

Bled is a good base for touring a small country. Ljubljana and medieval Radovljica are close, Postojna cave and Predjama Castle make a full day, and Piran gives you the Adriatic. Carinthia's lakes over the Austrian border round out the options.

Both are safe, calm and easy with children, but they keep them busy in different ways. In Bled it is all outdoors: rowing a boat to the island, the shallow lidos, the toboggan run and rope park on Straža, and pushchair-friendly flat lake paths. On a rainy day there is little to fall back on.

Salzburg has more under cover. There is the hands-on Haus der Natur, the zoo, the marionette theatre, Hellbrunn's trick fountains and the miners' slides in nearby salt mines. The trade-off is old-town cobbles and steep lanes that are hard work with a pushchair.

You can walk both centres, but Salzburg is easier once you leave them. Trolleybuses reach Hellbrunn and the Untersberg cable car, riverside cycle paths run through the city, and trains leave the main station for Munich and Vienna. You will only want a car for the lake villages.

Bled's lake path and summer tourist train cover the village, and buses reach Ljubljana and Bohinj. The trailheads, Pokljuka and the Soča valley are poorly served, though, so most serious explorers hire a car and then struggle to park in summer.

Salzburg has real shopping and Bled has almost none. On Getreidegasse and the old-town lanes you can buy made-to-measure Tracht, loden and leather goods, the Andräkirche farmers' market sells regional cheese, and in Advent the Domplatz Christmas market is one of the region's best known. In Bled, the lakeside stalls sell honey, lace and painted beehive panels, and anything more means a trip to Ljubljana.

Bled is the cheaper of the two, though as Slovenia's showpiece resort it costs more than the rest of the country. Guesthouses in the surrounding villages, the campsite, Radovljica or Bohinj all bring the bill down, and the lake path and mountain trails are free.

Salzburg is expensive all year, and rooms get scarce and costly during the festival and the Advent markets. Staying across the river, eating in the outer beer halls and using the city card are the main ways to save.

For music the gap is enormous. Salzburg puts on opera, orchestral concerts and theatre at the summer Festival in the Felsenreitschule and the Festspielhaus, with Jedermann performed in front of the cathedral. Mozart Week and the Easter Festival add more seasons, and the Mozarteum, the Landestheater and nightly chamber concerts at Mirabell keep music going the rest of the year.

Bled has only the occasional summer concert in the castle or a church and folk evenings put on for visitors. For a night at the opera you have to go to Ljubljana.

Bled was built for this. In the nineteenth century Arnold Rikli brought guests for air and sun cures and lake bathing, and mild springs still warm the eastern end of the lake. Several lakeside hotels use that water in their spas and pools and sometimes take day guests. There is no public bathhouse, so the rest comes mostly from still mornings on the shore and slow boat rides.

Salzburg has no springs of its own, but it has more places to bathe. The public Paracelsus Bad in the city park has saunas and a pool facing the Kapuzinerberg. The brine baths of Bad Reichenhall are twenty minutes away, and the radon springs and Belle Époque hotels of the Gastein valley make a longer trip south.