Budapest or Bratislava?

Neither city is a place to plan around swimming, and in both the Danube is off limits. Budapest still offers more in summer. Its big open-air lidos, with Palatinus on Margaret Island as the classic, fill a whole day with pools and lawns, and the shallow, warm Lake Velence is less than an hour away by train, with Lake Balaton further out.

Bratislava's choice comes down to the sandy lake shore at Zlate piesky, which you can reach by tram, and the Senec lakes half an hour out. Both are fine on a hot afternoon but crowded at weekends.

Bratislava cooks hearty farm food, such as bryndzove halusky with sheep's cheese and roast duck with lokse, and serves it in Old Town pubs, many of which brew their own beer. The best surprise is the Small Carpathian wine poured in local wine bars, but good meals take some searching away from the tourist menus on the main squares.

Budapest offers more depth and more occasions to eat. The Great Market Hall shows off paprika, salami and goose liver, the old Austro-Hungarian coffee houses serve Dobos cake, and there is a serious modern restaurant scene alongside the goulash and lángos. Tokaji and Eger reds make the wine list broader too.

Bratislava's sights fit into a pleasant day or two: St Martin's Cathedral, where Hungarian kings were crowned, the baroque lanes below the castle, the Blue Church and the ruins of Devin on their cliff. It is attractive and well kept, but small.

Budapest works on a grander scale. The UNESCO-listed riverfront links Parliament with the Royal Palace and the Fishermen's Bastion, and Andrássy Avenue runs out to Heroes' Square. The Museum of Fine Arts, the Dohány Street Synagogue and Memento Park add layers that take several days to explore properly.

A night out in Bratislava means a pub crawl through a few Old Town streets. They are lively at weekends and quiet midweek, and there are only a handful of clubs.

Budapest is a destination for going out in its own right. The ruin bars in the courtyards of District VII, the clubs along Kazinczy and Király streets, and the summer party boats and garden bars keep things going well past 2am. Calmer wine bars in District V offer an alternative.

Both cities have gentle wooded hills on their doorstep, and the difference is in the setting rather than the amount. Bratislava's Little Carpathians climb from the city edge to Kamzik through beech woods and vineyards. The Danube floodplain forests, the flat cycle route into Austria and the whitewater course at Cunovo give it a stronger river side.

Budapest's Buda Hills come with a cogwheel railway, a chairlift and caves carved by thermal water, and Margaret Island makes an easy loop in the middle of the city. The forested ridges of the Danube Bend, an hour north, offer the longest hikes either city can reach.

Here Bratislava has the edge. Vienna is about an hour away by train or boat, and the wine cellars and majolica pottery of Svaty Jur, Pezinok and Modra are close by. Carnuntum, Lednice-Valtice and Pannonhalma put three countries within an easy day.

Budapest's classic outing is the Danube Bend, with painterly Szentendre, the citadel at Visegrád and Esztergom's basilica. Beyond that, places like Eger, Hollókő and Balaton take about two hours each way, and the neighbouring capitals are better done with a night away.

Bratislava is safe and easy with children, with its traffic-free lanes, bronze statues to spot, the Kamzik forest park and a hillside zoo. After two or three days, though, you run out of things to do.

Budapest can keep a family busy for much longer. There is the old Art Nouveau zoo in City Park, the Children's Railway run by uniformed schoolchildren, the hands-on Palace of Wonders, and wave pools and slides at the summer lidos. The one thing to plan around is the noisy weekend nights in District VII.

Bratislava gets by on its small size. The Old Town, the castle and the riverfront all lie within a short walk of each other, and trams, trolleybuses and buses on a single ticket reach Kamzik, the zoo and Devin. With no metro, though, trips across the river or out to the suburbs take longer than the distances suggest.

Budapest pairs a flat, walkable Pest with a much fuller network. The tram along the Danube embankment past Parliament doubles as a sightseeing ride, the trams circling the Grand Boulevard run through the night, and continental Europe's oldest underground still runs beneath Andrássy Avenue in its little yellow carriages. Ferries on the river and the funicular up to the Castle District fill in the gaps.

In Bratislava, the best buys are from the state folk-craft centre, such as Modra majolica, lace and blue-print cloth, along with a few bottles of Small Carpathian wine. Otherwise it is malls and chain stores, with Vienna the place for fashion.

Budapest has more places worth browsing: Herend and Zsolnay porcelain, paprika and Tokaji from the Great Market Hall, small design boutiques in Districts V and VII, and Ecseri flea market for antiques and communist-era objects. Even so, it is not a city people travel to just to shop.

The two cost about the same, cheaper than Western Europe but not rock-bottom, and in both the prices climb around the main tourist squares. What differs is where the savings come. In Bratislava it is cheap beer, wine and transport, plus filling weekday lunch menus in ordinary pubs. In Budapest it is reasonable entry to the thermal baths, cheap wine and lunch menus in the residential districts, while the grand historic cafés charge for their setting.

Bratislava's Slovak National Theatre and the Slovak Philharmonic at the Reduta give a solid opera or concert evening with easy tickets, and the autumn music festival adds highlights. For a major international programme, though, locals head to Vienna.

Budapest offers music most nights. There is the State Opera House on Andrássy Avenue, the Art Nouveau hall of the Liszt Academy, the national concert hall at Müpa and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, as well as its own operetta theatre and folk dance ensembles.

This is where the two differ most. Bratislava has no thermal baths of its own, just hotel spas, quiet cafés and forest paths, so a proper soak means a trip out to Senec or the spa town of Piestany.

Budapest is built on more than a hundred hot springs. You can soak in the steaming outdoor pools of the Széchenyi in winter, under the mosaics of the Gellért, or beneath the sixteenth-century Ottoman domes of Rudas and Király. Here the baths are part of everyday life, not a treat to plan around.