Brighton or Utrecht?

Brighton at least has a beach in town. Steep shingle runs from the Marina to Hove, lifeguards cover it in season, and on a calm late-summer day you can have a cold but proper swim. Most visitors sit on the stones rather than swim, and sand is a drive away.

Utrecht has no beach. In a hot spell people swim in the lakes on the edge of the city, and the North Sea at Zandvoort or Scheveningen is a train ride of an hour or more.

Brighton gives food-minded visitors more to work with. Independent kitchens are packed into the North Laine, the Lanes and Kemptown, there is a long vegetarian and vegan tradition and good coffee, seafood stalls line the seafront, and Sussex sparkling wine comes from the chalk hills.

In Utrecht the setting matters more than the cooking. Eating in the old cellars of the Oudegracht at the water's edge is the part you remember, and the Indonesian and Surinamese kitchens are something Brighton cannot match. Otherwise the food is good everyday eating rather than a reason to come.

Utrecht has more to see. Its medieval centre is one of the best preserved in the Netherlands. The Dom Tower stands apart from the surviving choir and cloister, a reminder of the 1674 storm. The Centraal Museum, Catharijneconvent and the UNESCO-listed Rietveld Schröder House fill two or three days.

Brighton rests largely on one building, the Royal Pavilion, which is more extravagant than anything in Utrecht. Around it, the pleasure is in walking past the Regency crescents of Kemptown and Hove and through the Lanes, not in working through collections.

Brighton is the place for a big night out. Clubs in the seafront arches and on West Street stay open into the small hours, Kemptown has one of Britain's oldest LGBTQ+ scenes, and the pubs are full all week. The downside is rowdy stag and hen weekends.

Utrecht's nights are run by students and are gentler, mostly brown cafés and terraces around the Neude and along the Oudegracht. It is lovely for a summer drink by the water, but people who want to go clubbing usually take the train to Amsterdam.

Brighton's outdoors are far better. The South Downs start at the edge of the city, with chalk ridges, Devil's Dyke and the South Downs Way, and the white cliffs of the Seven Sisters and Beachy Head are under an hour east. Off the seafront you can windsurf, kitesurf and paddleboard.

Around Utrecht the land is flat, so getting outdoors means cycling. Routes follow the Vecht past country estates and windmills, cross the polders, or take the sandy forest trails of the Utrechtse Heuvelrug. The countryside is pleasant rather than dramatic, and the Loosdrecht lakes are the place for sailing.

Both make excellent bases. Brighton's great asset is London, about an hour away, along with Lewes, Arundel, Chichester and the medieval towns of Rye and Winchelsea. The country houses of the Weald and the vineyards on the Downs are easier to reach by car.

Utrecht comes out a little ahead because it sits at the centre of the Dutch rail network. Amsterdam is under half an hour away, and Rotterdam, The Hague, Delft, Leiden and Gouda are all simple trips. You can see a whole country without changing hotels.

Brighton gives children the traditional English seaside, while Utrecht keeps them busy with museums in a calm, compact centre. In Brighton that means pier rides and arcades, the Victorian aquarium, Volk's Electric Railway and paddling at Hove Lagoon. The cold shingle is better for throwing stones than building sandcastles, though, and late weekend nights in the centre are rowdy.

Utrecht's draws are the Railway Museum in an old station, the Miffy museum for toddlers and the music boxes of the Speelklok, with Kasteel de Haar as a fairy-tale outing. The thing to watch with small children is the constant flow of bikes.

Utrecht is the easier city to get around. The main station is on the edge of the old town, the streets are flat, and bikes, trams and buses all use the same tap-in card as the trains.

In Brighton you can also walk from the station to the sea, but the climb back and the steep streets of Kemptown make it harder work. Beyond the centre you rely on buses. In both cities a car is more trouble than it is worth.

Brighton's shops lean alternative, Utrecht's towards design. Brighton's North Laine is the place for vintage clothing, records, comics and retro furniture, the Lanes add jewellery and antique dealers, and the covered Open Market on London Road sells local produce.

In Utrecht the small streets along the Oudegracht wharves and the Twijnstraat are better for fashion, books and homeware. Markets play a bigger part in a visit here, with the large general market on Vredenburg, flowers along the Janskerkhof and textiles by the canal. Neither city has luxury streets. The chains sit in Churchill Square in Brighton and in Hoog Catharijne, next to the station, in Utrecht.

Neither city is cheap, and in both the room is the main cost. Brighton's rooms cost most on summer weekends and less midweek and in winter. The beach, the piers and the Downs are free, so days cost little, but train fares add up if you take several day trips.

In Utrecht the shortage of hotels in the centre keeps rooms expensive. The compact centre and rental bikes mean you spend almost nothing on transport, and cheap student lunch cafés help keep food costs down.

Brighton's performing year peaks in May, when the Brighton Festival and the Fringe fill theatres, churches and pubs for weeks. The rest of the year the Dome and the Theatre Royal take touring shows, comedy is strong, small music rooms are everywhere, and Glyndebourne's opera is close by in summer.

Utrecht's music happens all year round at TivoliVredenburg, where classical concerts, pop and jazz share one building, often on the same evening. The Festival Oude Muziek makes it a stop for early-music lovers. There is no opera house, and theatre is mostly in Dutch, while Brighton's stages work in English.

Utrecht is the better place to unwind. The large Dutch sauna complexes in the green belt make a proper wellness day out, and evenings on the canal wharves and the Pandhof cloister garden make the centre restful.

Brighton's calm comes out of season, with long walks past Hove's lawns and beach huts, or a dawn swim with the year-round sea swimmers followed by a seafront sauna. Summer weekends there are anything but restful.