Brussels or Heidelberg?

Neither works as a beach destination, but Brussels at least has the sea within reach: the wide sandy beaches of Ostend, De Haan and Knokke are a little over an hour by train, good for a breezy day on the promenade even if the North Sea stays cool at about 18°C. Heidelberg is several hours from any coast, so a hot afternoon there means the town's outdoor pools or a flooded gravel-pit lake on the Rhine plain.

Brussels is much the stronger place to eat. Its own kitchen runs from friterie frites to waterzooi, shrimp croquettes and beef stewed in beer, the brown cafés pour lambics and gueuzes brewed only around the city, and the Sablon chocolatiers are a reason to visit in themselves. Matonge, Saint-Josse and Schaerbeek add Congolese, Moroccan and Turkish cooking, and Saint-Gilles and Ixelles have the best neighbourhood restaurants.

Heidelberg offers hearty Baden and Kurpfalz dishes such as Maultaschen and Schäufele, white asparagus in spring, and its real asset, Riesling and Pinot from the Bergstrasse vineyards on the town's edge. Beyond that the range is a small city's, and the best meals are in Neuenheim or the village wine taverns rather than on the Hauptstrasse.

Brussels has the greater depth. The Grand-Place is one of Europe's finest squares, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts hold Bruegel, Rubens and a whole museum of Magritte, and Victor Horta's Art Nouveau houses in Saint-Gilles and Ixelles are UNESCO listed, with the Cinquantenaire museums and the comics murals on top. The catch is a broken cityscape where grand quarters give way to office blocks.

Heidelberg is the reverse: less to see, but more intact. The castle ruin, the baroque Altstadt, the Old Bridge and the graffiti-covered Student Prison of Germany's oldest university make one of the country's most photogenic old towns, and most visitors have seen it in a day or two.

Brussels gives a fuller night out. Drinkers spill across the streets around Saint-Géry and the Bourse, Place Flagey and Châtelain draw a local crowd, there is a techno club in the Marolles with a European name, and a queer scene around Rue du Marché au Charbon.

Heidelberg goes out the way students do, in the small pubs packed along the Untere Strasse and old fraternity taverns with carved tables. Outside term and on weeknights it goes quiet early, and a proper club night means the train to Mannheim or Frankfurt.

Heidelberg has the outdoors on its doorstep. The Odenwald's forested hills rise straight from the old town, the Philosophers' Walk and the Königstuhl lead to long trails, the Heiligenberg hides Celtic ramparts among the trees, and the Neckar cycle path and the Palatinate Forest offer days more.

Brussels does have one fine piece of nature, the tall beech stands of the Sonian Forest on its south-eastern edge, plus parks such as the Bois de la Cambre. Beyond them the land is flat, and real hills mean the Meuse and Ardennes valleys, a train ride of up to two hours away.

Both are excellent bases, but Brussels has more famous places within easy reach. Ghent is about half an hour away, Antwerp about forty minutes and Bruges about an hour, with Leuven and Mechelen closer still, and high-speed trains put Paris within about an hour and a half.

Heidelberg's outings are smaller in name but rich: the cathedrals of Speyer and Worms, Schwetzingen's palace gardens, the monastery at Maulbronn and castle villages up the Neckar. The Palatinate wine villages are easiest by car, while Brussels needs nothing but a train.

Both work about equally well with children, in different ways. Brussels is the indoor option, with the Iguanodon herd at the Natural Sciences museum, the Atomium beside Mini-Europe, Train World and the comics, which is useful when the weather turns. Heidelberg is an outdoor town, small and safe, with the funicular, a fairy-tale park on the Königstuhl, the riverside zoo and boat trips, plus the aircraft and submarine at Speyer's Technik Museum. Each has cobbles that make a pushchair hard work, and Brussels adds heavy traffic.

Both are easy without a car, at different scales. Brussels is a city with a full metro, tram and bus network, tap-to-pay fares and direct rail links from its stations to the airport. Its central sights are close together, but the climb from the lower to the upper town is steep, and driving is a trial.

Heidelberg is mostly one long walk down the pedestrianised Hauptstrasse, with a tram in from the distant main station and a funicular up to the castle. One fare covers trams, buses and the S-Bahn across the Rhine-Neckar region, and the flat riverbanks suit a bicycle.

Brussels is the better city to shop in, mainly for local things: master chocolatiers in the Galeries Royales and on the Sablon, antiques on the Sablon, vintage stalls at the Jeu de Balle flea market, and Belgian designers on Rue Antoine Dansaert, with luxury on Avenue Louise.

Heidelberg has one very long shopping street, high-street chains at one end and steins, cuckoo clocks and Studentenkuss chocolates at the other, with a few bookshops and boutiques in the lanes. Bergstrasse wine is the best souvenir, and serious fashion means a trip to Frankfurt.

Costs are much the same, but the expensive days fall at opposite ends of the week. In Brussels the hotels serve EU and business travellers, so weekdays are dearer and weekends often better value, and the immigrant neighbourhoods and frites stands keep daily spending down. In Heidelberg, rooms are scarce and summer weekends, congresses and graduations push them up, so many visitors stay in Mannheim, while student cafés, modest museum entry and the regional ticket keep the rest reasonable.

Brussels has the bigger stage. La Monnaie stages adventurous opera in the house where the 1830 revolution began, Horta's Bozar hosts the national orchestra, Flagey is prized for its acoustics, and the Queen Elisabeth Competition is a fixture of the classical year. Contemporary dance and theatre in French and Dutch, touring rock acts and a marionette theatre widen it further.

Heidelberg does well for a town of its size, with a municipal theatre for opera, drama and dance, the Heidelberger Frühling chamber music festival in spring, and plays and concerts in the castle courtyard in summer. For bigger productions, Mannheim is about twenty minutes away.

Heidelberg is the easier place to unwind. It has no baths of its own, but large thermal complexes with saunas and saline pools lie about half an hour away in the Kraichgau, and Baden-Baden about an hour, while the Neckar meadows and forest paths above the Philosophers' Walk are quiet in the evening.

Brussels offers North African hammams, hotel spas and handsome Art Deco pools, but no bathing tradition, and the town of Spa is a long way off. The calmest moments come from a long lunch or a terrace in Ixelles, against a capital's traffic.