Budapest or Hallstatt?

Neither place offers a beach vacation, and for swimming they are roughly level, but the water is very different. In Budapest you swim in pools. The big summer lidos such as Palatinus on Margaret Island have lawns, wave pools and a crowd that stays all day. For open water, the warm, shallow Lake Velence is under an hour away by train.

Hallstatt has a real lake but a cold one. Hallstätter See is clear and deep, warms to about 20°C at best, and is reached from a small jetty in the village or the lido at Obertraun. It is better for a bracing dip after a hike than for lazy afternoons.

Budapest is far stronger for eating. It has goulash and lángos, cakes in the old coffee houses, the produce stalls of the Great Market Hall, and wine bars pouring Tokaji and Balaton whites. There is a modern restaurant scene on top of all that, although the range is narrow beyond Central European cooking.

Hallstatt has a few guesthouse dining rooms and lakeside terraces serving schnitzel, dumplings and smoked char or whitefish from the lake. The view does a lot of the work, and kitchens may close early. Food lovers staying there usually drive to Bad Ischl's patisseries.

Budapest offers days of sightseeing. Parliament faces the Royal Palace and the Fishermen's Bastion across the Danube. Andrássy Avenue leads to Heroes' Square, and the Museum of Fine Arts, the Dohány Street Synagogue and Memento Park are all within reach.

Hallstatt's culture is old and unusual, but you can see it in a day. Seven thousand years of salt mining, the Iron Age finds that named the Hallstatt culture, and the Beinhaus with its painted skulls are well worth the trip. Most of the attraction, though, is the setting of the village itself.

The two could hardly be further apart here. Budapest has one of Central Europe's liveliest nights out. The ruin bars and late clubs of District VII run past 2am, and in summer there are garden bars and party boats on the Danube. Quieter wine bars in District V are an alternative to the stag-party weekends.

In Hallstatt, the day visitors leave and the lane goes silent. Evenings mean dinner, a glass of wine by the water and a walk in the dark.

Hallstatt is a true Alpine base. The Dachstein massif rises straight from the lake. The Krippenstein cable car leads to the Five Fingers platform and the giant ice caves, and in summer there are via ferratas and hut hikes, with ski touring in winter.

Budapest's outdoors is gentler: oak and beech forest in the Buda Hills, a cogwheel railway, jogging loops on Margaret Island and forested ridges around the Danube Bend. It is good for a half day of walking, but there are no mountains.

Both make good bases for outings, with a different flavour to each. From Budapest the trips are about towns and history along the Danube Bend: painterly Szentendre, Visegrád's citadel and Esztergom's basilica, with Eger and Hollókő a longer ride. The suburban trains make most of them easy without a car.

From Hallstatt the outings are lake towns and imperial spas: Bad Ischl's Kaiservilla, St Wolfgang's altarpiece and Gmunden's lake castle, with Salzburg about an hour and a half by car. Buses work, but the trips need more planning.

Budapest gives children more to do over several days. There is the historic zoo in City Park, the Children's Railway run by schoolchildren, the Palace of Wonders science centre and lidos with slides. Trams make getting around with a pushchair fairly easy.

Hallstatt has a couple of real highlights, the miners' slides in the salt mine and the ice caves for older children. The village itself is a steep, crowded lane, and families usually do better staying in Obertraun.

Trams carry you around Budapest, while in Hallstatt you walk and take a lake boat. In Budapest, central Pest is flat, tram 2 runs past Parliament along the river and the boulevard trams run all night. The short metro includes Line 1, with its historic yellow carriages. Nobody needs a car.

You can walk across Hallstatt in minutes, although there are steps. The harder part is getting there and going further: a boat across the lake from the station, thin bus services outside summer, and a car that many visitors find almost essential for the wider region.

Budapest is a modest but real place to shop. You can buy Herend and Zsolnay porcelain, paprika and Tokaji at the market hall, local design in Districts V and VII, and communist-era finds at Ecseri flea market.

Hallstatt has souvenir shops along its main lane. The one buy worth taking home is salt from the mine above the village, in bags, grinders or bath mixes.

Budapest is much the cheaper of the two, and the gap is widest in the two things every visitor pays for, a bed and dinner. A comfortable mid-range room within walking distance of the sights is easy to find, and a tram ride or a glass of Hungarian wine costs little. Money goes further still at weekday lunch menus away from Váci utca and the Basilica. The only places that charge for their setting are the grand cafés and the restaurants of the tourist core.

In Hallstatt, the setting is what you pay for. With so few beds on that narrow ledge and so many people wanting one, a lakeside night costs more than in most of Austria, and far more than in Budapest. Each of the main outings, from the mine to the Krippenstein, also carries its own ticket. The usual answer is to sleep in Bad Ischl or another nearby town and come in by bus or car, a trade-off a Budapest stay never asks of you.

Budapest is one of the great music cities of the region. Opera plays on Andrássy Avenue, there are concerts in the Liszt Academy's Art Nouveau hall and at Müpa, and the city also has operetta, folk dance and church concerts most nights. Tickets are easy to get.

Hallstatt has the village brass band on feast days and the occasional summer church concert. For a proper evening out you would go to Bad Ischl's operetta or Salzburg.

Budapest is built on hot springs, and soaking is part of daily life there. You can choose Széchenyi's steaming outdoor pools, the mosaics at Gellért or the Ottoman domes of Rudas and Király, then finish with a slow coffee house afternoon.

Hallstatt offers stillness instead: mist on the lake at dawn and quiet evenings once the crowds have gone. Its spa tradition is half an hour away in the salt-brine baths of Bad Ischl.