Cambridge or Utrecht?

Neither city is for a beach vacation, though Utrecht copes slightly better. Its recreation lakes, such as the Maarsseveense Plassen, sit right on the edge of town, and the North Sea sand at Zandvoort or Scheveningen is a simple train ride away.

Cambridge's coast in Suffolk and Norfolk takes about an hour and a half by car. Swimming there means Jesus Green Lido or a dip in the Cam at Grantchester Meadows, both pleasant on a hot afternoon but small affairs.

Food is a sideshow in both, but the character differs. Cambridge leans on the English pub, with ales and Sunday roasts in low-beamed rooms, plus tea rooms by the river and the daily market on Market Hill.

Utrecht's appeal is the setting, eating on the old wharves of the Oudegracht at the water's edge, and its everyday food has a Dutch colonial thread of Indonesian and Surinamese kitchens. Neither has a cuisine worth a trip in itself.

Cambridge has the deeper sightseeing. Its colleges form a near-continuous run of medieval and Renaissance courts, with King's College Chapel among the finest late Gothic buildings in Europe, and the Fitzwilliam is a museum far grander than anything in Utrecht.

Utrecht's highlights are fewer but distinctive: climbing the Dom Tower, the two-level Oudegracht canal and the Rietveld Schröder House for lovers of modern design. Its museums are good rather than great, so the city works more as a pleasant old centre than a sightseeing marathon.

Utrecht makes for the livelier evenings. Its student crowd fills the bars around the Neude and the Janskerkhof on weeknights as well as weekends, and drinking at the canal edge on a summer night is an event in itself.

Cambridge's evenings revolve around historic inns and riverside pub gardens, and its small club scene goes quiet when the students leave. In both cities a big night out means a train ride, to London or to Amsterdam.

Both landscapes are flat, but Utrecht's surroundings give an active visitor more to do. Cycle routes lead past windmills and country estates along the Vecht, the Utrechtse Heuvelrug offers wooded ridges and heath for walking and mountain biking, and the Loosdrecht lakes are good for sailing.

Cambridge's outdoors is gentler and smaller in scale: punting through the Backs, the water meadows to Grantchester, the birds and wild ponies of Wicken Fen and a short woodland walk at Wandlebury.

Both are fine bases, but Utrecht's position at the centre of the Dutch rail network is hard to beat. Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Delft, Leiden and Gouda are all short train rides away, so you can cover much of a country without moving hotels.

Cambridge has London under an hour away and Ely's cathedral fifteen minutes off, but its other prizes, the wool towns of Lavenham and Long Melford or the big National Trust estates, are often easier with a car.

Utrecht has more aimed squarely at children. The Railway Museum in an old station is one of the best children's museums in the country, toddlers have the Miffy museum, and Dutch culture takes children everywhere. The one hazard is the constant stream of bikes.

Cambridge is safe, green and easy, with the free Museum of Zoology and the aircraft at Duxford as highlights. But its main sights, the colleges, are hushed and grown-up, so younger children run out of things to do sooner.

Both centres are flat and walkable, with the bike as the local way to travel. Utrecht is easier from the moment you arrive: Utrecht Centraal sits on the edge of the old town, and trams and buses use the same tap-in card as the trains.

In Cambridge the station is a walk of about twenty-five minutes from the colleges, local buses are unremarkable, and the country estates nearby really need a car.

Utrecht offers the more rewarding browsing. Independent fashion, design and homeware shops line the Oudegracht wharves and lanes like the Zadelstraat and the Twijnstraat, and the flower market at the Janskerkhof and the textile market add colour.

Cambridge is smaller in scale, and its real speciality is books, from old academic booksellers to second-hand dealers in the lanes off Trinity Street. Neither city has a luxury street.

Neither is cheap, but Cambridge is the dearer of the two. Its limited hotels are in steady demand from university visitors and conferences, and eating out is priced like the wealthy south-east of England.

Utrecht's beds are expensive too, but cheap student lunch cafés and snack bars help keep day-to-day costs down. Cambridge fights back with free entry to the Fitzwilliam and most university museums, and evensong costs nothing.

Both have a solid music life of different kinds. In Cambridge it is choral: the choirs of King's, St John's and Trinity singing evensong in candlelit chapels, alongside the Footlights comedy tradition and the summer Folk Festival.

Utrecht is built around TivoliVredenburg, whose stacked halls run from the Radio Philharmonic to pop and jazz, and the Festival Oude Muziek draws early-music lovers from across Europe. Theatre there is mostly in Dutch, so English speakers get more from Cambridge's stages.

Neither city has a bathing culture, so rest takes different forms. Utrecht has the large Dutch sauna complexes in its green belt, with saunas, steam rooms and outdoor pools, plus quiet spots like the Pandhof cloister garden.

Cambridge relies on hotel spas and the lido, and its calm is found in a punt on the river, the Botanic Garden or tea in an orchard at Grantchester, best enjoyed early or late when the tour groups have gone.