Cadiz or Granada?

Cadiz is a beach city in the full sense. You can swim at La Caleta between its two castles or on the long golden sand of Playa Victoria around a morning's sightseeing, and the Costa de la Luz adds Bolonia, El Palmar and Zahara within an hour. The levante wind is the one drawback.

Granada has no beach of its own. The Costa Tropical is about an hour south, with pebble and dark-sand coves at Salobreña and La Herradura, and its calm Mediterranean water is better for snorkelling than the Atlantic. From day to day, though, swimming in Granada means a pool.

Cadiz is the better place to eat of the two, and fish is the reason. Freidurías hand out paper cones of fried fish and tortillitas de camarones, tapas bars in La Viña serve almadraba bluefin tuna, and the manzanilla comes cold from the sherry towns nearby.

Granada eats like an inland city, with heartier plates: Alpujarras ham, habas con jamón and aubergine with cane honey, and a free tapa arrives with every drink. Its Moroccan teterías on Calderería Nueva add mint tea and pastries, a sweet side Cadiz lacks. Neither city offers much fine dining or international cooking.

Granada has one of Europe's great monuments in the Alhambra. Around it are the lanes of the Albaicín, the cathedral, the Royal Chapel and the extravagant sacristy of the Carthusian monastery, enough to fill several days.

Cadiz has the longer history, reaching back to the Phoenicians, and its pleasures are quieter: the old town with its watchtowers, the cathedral's bell tower, the camera obscura at the Torre Tavira and the half-hidden Roman theatre. Two or three days cover it, and nothing there compares with the Nasrid palaces.

Granada's university keeps it busier at night for most of the year. The bars around Calle Elvira and the student clubs near Pedro Antonio de Alarcón run towards dawn at weekends. It quietens in summer, when the students go home.

Cadiz runs the other way. It is liveliest in summer, when the terraces along the Playa Victoria promenade stay open into the early hours, and during Carnival in February. The rest of the year it is mostly tapas bars in La Viña, with little clubbing.

Granada sits right beside high mountains. The Sierra Nevada offers walking towards Mulhacén in summer and skiing above Pradollano in winter, and the terraced valleys and old mule paths of the Alpujarras are close by.

The outdoors around Cadiz is flat and coastal: salt pans and flamingos in the Bahía de Cádiz park, pines on the clifftops at La Breña, and wind sports and whale-watching from Tarifa. Real mountain walking means a two-hour drive to Grazalema.

Both are excellent bases, for different sides of Andalusia. From Cadiz the trips are to sherry country and the white towns: Jerez by train, the ferry to El Puerto, and Vejer and Arcos by car, with Seville under two hours away.

Granada looks north and west instead, to the Mezquita in Córdoba, the dolmens at Antequera and the Renaissance towns of Úbeda and Baeza, with the Alpujarras villages up in the mountains. Seville makes a comfortable outing from Cadiz but is too far for a day from Granada.

Cadiz is the easier choice with children. A wide beach with lifeguards, a flat old town and shady parks such as the Genovés make the days simple, even without a zoo or an aquarium.

Granada has the one big attraction for children, the hands-on Parque de las Ciencias. But its hills are steep and cobbled for pushchairs, and its summer afternoons are much hotter. It works better for families in spring or autumn, or with a snow day in winter.

Cadiz is built on a flat isthmus, so the old town is an easy walk from one shore to the other, and buses run the length of the long strip to Playa Victoria. Trains leave from the old town itself for Jerez and Seville, and the catamaran crosses the bay to El Puerto. The Costa de la Luz beaches and the white towns, though, need a hire car or a tour.

Granada climbs. Its lower town is as easy going as anywhere in Cadiz, but the Alhambra and the Albaicín sit on steep cobbled hills, and the small red minibuses save real effort there. A car is a burden in the old centre and only earns its keep for the Alpujarras and the mountain villages.

Neither is a shopping destination, so the difference lies in what you bring home. Cadiz has fans, ceramics, flamenco fashion and sherry, found around the Mercado Central and Calle Ancha. Granada has a little more local craft: taracea inlaid woodwork, Fajalauza pottery, leather and guitars from its workshops, alongside the souvenir lanes of the Alcaicería.

Both cities feed you well for little. Cadiz has its freidurías and market counters, while Granada serves a free tapa with every drink. That turns an evening of bar-hopping into dinner and gives Granada a slight edge.

The two cities differ on where a room gets expensive. In Cadiz the squeeze comes from the old town's handful of hotels, which fill up in summer and Carnival week, so a room out by Playa Victoria is where you save. In Granada the lower town and the Realejo are modestly priced, and the extra cost sits up on the hill, in boutique stays in the Albaicín and terraces facing the Alhambra.

Flamenco runs deep in Cadiz, where the peñas of the old Santa María quarter keep alegrías alive. Its most distinctive stage is the Gran Teatro Falla, home to the satirical Carnival choirs and to an autumn festival of Ibero-American theatre. For an orchestra or opera, though, Cadiz sends you to Seville.

That is where Granada pulls ahead. Beyond the zambra in the Sacromonte caves, it has its summer festival of music and dance, staged inside the Alhambra and the Generalife, and a city orchestra at the Auditorio Manuel de Falla. For a wider choice of evenings out, it is the better pick.

Granada has a bathing tradition to draw on. The hammams in the lower Albaicín recreate the Moorish baths, and the spa towns of Lanjarón and Alhama de Granada are within an hour.

Cadiz has nothing like this in town, so treatments mean a hotel spa or a drive to Novo Sancti Petri or Jerez. What it does well is the slow day: a walk along the sea walls, a siesta, and sunset over La Caleta.