Cambridge or Paris?

Neither city is a beach destination, and the nearest coast is a long trip from both. From Cambridge it is the shingle and sand of Suffolk and Norfolk on the North Sea, and from Paris it is the Normandy resorts on the Channel, two hours away by train.

The difference is in fresh-water swimming. Cambridge has the 1920s lido on Jesus Green and river swimming at Grantchester Meadows, a country swim among willows and grazing cattle. Paris lays sand along its riverbanks in summer and adds canal bathing at La Villette and its Art Deco public pools.

Food in Cambridge is solid English comfort. Old pubs serve ales and Sunday roasts, riverside tea rooms do scones, Market Hill has street-food stalls every day and Mill Road adds Asian and Mediterranean cooking. It is pleasant, but food is not a reason to go, and a few days is enough to cover it.

In Paris, food is the reason for many trips. There are morning markets such as Aligre, a boulangerie and a cheese shop in every neighbourhood, zinc-counter bistros, inventive neo-bistros in the eastern arrondissements and the haute cuisine tradition. Alongside them you find North African couscous in Belleville and Vietnamese pho in the 13th arrondissement. That is enough range for every meal of a long stay, as long as you walk a few streets away from the set menus near the big sights.

Cambridge has a remarkable historic core for a city its size: King's College Chapel, Trinity's Great Court and the Wren Library, and the Fitzwilliam's art and antiquities. Two or three days covers it well.

Paris works on a different scale. The Louvre, the Orsay, the Pompidou and the Orangerie would each outdraw anything in Cambridge, and Notre-Dame, the Sainte-Chapelle and the Haussmann boulevards make the city itself a sight. A culture trip here can run for a week without repeating itself.

Evenings in Cambridge revolve around the pub. There are historic inns, riverside gardens and a few livelier bars on Regent Street and Mill Road, and the small student club scene thins out once term ends.

Paris offers a real night out. You can work through the crowded bars of Oberkampf, the Canal Saint-Martin and Belleville, the cocktail bars of South Pigalle and the gay scene in the Marais, then go on to house and techno clubs that run until dawn. That kind of night is what sends Cambridge locals to London.

Neither city has dramatic scenery. Outdoors in Cambridge means the flat edge of the Fens: punting, the meadow path to Grantchester, and birds and wild ponies at Wicken Fen. Paris has more variety, from the cliffs and lake of the Buttes-Chaumont and the large woods of Boulogne and Vincennes to the forest and climbing boulders of Fontainebleau, forty minutes away by train.

Cambridge is a good base in its own right. Ely's cathedral is fifteen minutes away by train, London is under an hour, and the wool town of Lavenham, Bury St Edmunds and Norwich are all within easy reach.

Paris has the longer and grander list. Versailles, Fontainebleau and Chantilly are close, Chartres and Giverny are a short trip, and fast trains reach the Champagne houses of Reims, old Rouen and the Loire châteaux beyond Tours. On a long stay you could spend many days out of Paris and still not run out of places to go.

Cambridge is easy with children: small, flat and green, with punting, free museums of zoology and dinosaurs, and Duxford's historic aircraft just south of town. A few days is enough to see it all.

Paris has far more to do. There are Disneyland and Parc Astérix, the hands-on Cité des Sciences, a zoo, an aquarium, and carousels and toy sailboats in the Luxembourg. The cost is daily hassle, with metro stairs, crowded trains for pushchairs and small hotel rooms, none of which you meet in Cambridge.

The centre of Cambridge is small, flat and mostly pedestrian, best covered on foot or by hired bicycle. The station is a fair walk out, though, and the country estates are easier to reach by car.

Paris combines a great walking centre with a metro dense enough that a station is always close, and RER lines run out to the airports and Versailles. Its weak points are stairs, rush-hour crush and pickpockets, while Cambridge's are only its ordinary buses once you leave the centre.

In Cambridge, shopping fits around sightseeing. There is the daily market on Market Hill, the usual chains in the Grand Arcade and, above all, the bookshops, both academic and second-hand.

Paris is a shopping destination in its own right. It runs from the fashion houses of Avenue Montaigne and the department stores Galeries Lafayette and Le Bon Marché to Marais designers, the covered passages, the Saint-Ouen flea market and specialist shops for chocolate and cheese. The two cities meet only in old books, where the bouquinistes on the Seine are the Paris answer to Cambridge's lanes.

Both cities are expensive places to stay, with costly hotel rooms and restaurant prices to match, so the difference lies in where you can save. In Cambridge the Fitzwilliam and most university museums are free, the centre needs no transport, evensong costs nothing, and a college room out of term can be good value.

Paris charges full admission at its major museums, though the city's own museums have free permanent collections. Walking, reasonably priced public transport, bakery and market lunches and a picnic by the river keep daily costs down.

The highlight in Cambridge is choral music: evensong sung by the choirs of King's, St John's and Trinity in candlelit chapels. Beyond that there is student theatre and comedy in the Footlights tradition and the summer Folk Festival.

Paris has the full range. It has the Palais Garnier and the Opéra Bastille, the Philharmonie, the Comédie-Française, jazz cellars in Saint-Germain and cabaret in Pigalle. Most Paris theatre is in French, so music and ballet are the safer choices for many visitors.

Rest in Cambridge is green and slow. You might spend an afternoon in a punt, sit on a bench in the Botanic Garden or a college garden, or walk across the meadows to tea in an orchard at Grantchester. The summer crowds on King's Parade are easy to escape early in the morning or at the edge of town.\n\nParis offers steam instead of meadows, in the tiled rooms and mint tea of the Grande Mosquée hammam and in smaller neighbourhood hammams. Otherwise, quiet comes in short breaks from a loud, fast city, such as a chair in the Luxembourg gardens or an evening walk by the Seine. For a full spa treatment, both cities rely on hotel spas and day spas.