Cannes or Venice?

Cannes is built around its beach. Fine sand curves along the Croisette, the wide and mostly free Plage du Midi lies west of the old port, and the water is calm from June to early October. The Lérins islands and the Esterel coves add clearer swimming off rock, so a week of beach days has plenty of variety.

Venice's beach is the Lido, a vaporetto ride across the lagoon. It has long sand and shallow, warm water, though the water is greenish rather than clear. It suits a hot afternoon with children, but it lies apart from the city and most visitors go only once.

Both towns eat from the sea, and both have streets of indifferent tourist restaurants, along the Croisette in Cannes and around San Marco in Venice. Beyond that they eat differently. Cannes is about sitting down to Provençal food: produce and goat cheeses from the Forville market, bouillabaisse and socca in the bistros of Le Suquet, and rosé on a terrace. There is also a proper fine-dining tier in the palace hotels and up in Mougins.

Venice has more cooking that is its own. Grazing on cicchetti at a bacaro counter with a spritz makes a meal in itself, and the Rialto market supplies typically Venetian lagoon dishes such as cuttlefish risotto black with ink, bigoli in salsa and sarde in saor. Neither town offers much beyond its own region's food, so the choice is between a long Provençal lunch and an evening moving from one bacaro to the next.

This is where the two differ most. Venice offers six centuries of palaces and churches on water: San Marco, the Doge's Palace, the Accademia, Titian in the Frari, Tintoretto at San Rocco and modern art at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Even a week leaves things unseen.

Cannes has a pleasant old quarter with the castle museum on Le Suquet, the Belle Époque hotels and the red-carpet steps of the Palais des Festivals. Together they fill a morning, and visitors who want more art there take the train to Antibes or Nice.

Cannes has the livelier nights, though only in season. From June to September the beach clubs on the Croisette turn into party venues, a few clubs stay open until dawn and the streets behind the old port fill with cocktail bars. All of it is dressy and expensive.

In Venice the evening peaks at aperitivo, with spritzes at the bacari around the Rialto and along the Fondamenta della Misericordia, and students keep Campo Santa Margherita going a little later. By midnight the canals are silent. That makes a lovely walk home, but there is no real night out.

Cannes has dramatic scenery close by. The red volcanic rock of the Esterel drops into the sea twenty minutes to the west, there are pine paths on Sainte-Marguerite and wild shore around Cap d'Antibes, and inland there are the pre-Alps and skiing in winter. Sailing and diving round the islands add a day on the water, though in high summer fire risk can close forest trails.

In Venice the outdoors means the lagoon: quiet marshes full of herons and flamingos, with kayaking, Venetian rowing and flat cycling along the Lido and Pellestrina. This kind of nature is gentler, and real mountains are more than two hours away.

Both make excellent bases, but the trips are very different. From Cannes the coastal train runs to Antibes, Nice, Villefranche, Monaco and Menton. Perched villages such as Saint-Paul-de-Vence and Èze, and perfume-making Grasse, lie just inland, so the days out are about sea views, villages and art foundations.

From Venice the trips are to historic cities: Padua for Giotto, Palladio's Vicenza, Verona with its arena, and Bologna or Trieste further out. Murano, Burano and Torcello add a lagoon day without a train.

Cannes is the easier town with small children. Its sandy beaches slope gently into calm water, the flat Croisette has carousels and play areas and suits pushchairs, and the boat to the Lérins islands makes a good picnic day.

Venice gives children more to wonder at and their parents less ease. A ride on the water or a glass furnace on Murano can thrill a child in a way the Croisette never will. But in Venice the beach is a boat trip away, not at the end of the street, and every outing means carrying a buggy over bridge after bridge where Cannes is flat. Venice works for a few days with children old enough to walk all day. Cannes is the better base for a longer family vacation.

Both centres are easy to explore on foot, but in different ways. Cannes is small and mostly flat, and everything is within twenty minutes' walk. The station is in the middle of town, with coastal trains to Nice and Monaco, though the inland villages and the Esterel corniche really need a car.

Venice has no cars at all. You walk a twisting maze of stepped bridges or take the slow, crowded vaporetto, which is a pleasure in itself but hard work with suitcases. Trains and buses arrive right at its edge.

The two are about level for shopping, but they sell very different things. Cannes is about fashion. The big Paris houses face the sea along the Croisette, mid-range French labels fill Rue d'Antibes, and Rue Meynadier sells Provençal soaps, fabrics and olive oil.

Venice is about things made by hand: Murano glass, Burano lace, papier-mâché masks, marbled paper and furlane slippers. They are best bought in real workshops away from the imported copies on the main routes.

Neither is a budget destination, but the costs fall differently. In Cannes they come mostly from summer and event-week hotel rates, private beach loungers and seafront dining. The public beaches, picnics from the market and cheap coastal trains help, as does staying in a neighbouring town.

In Venice nearly everything costs more: central hotels, water transport priced for visitors, and entry to many sights and churches. Cicchetti at the counter, a room in a quieter sestiere or in Mestre, and a winter visit bring the cost down.

Venice is much stronger for live performance. La Fenice, where Verdi and Rossini had premieres, runs a full season of opera, ballet and concerts. The Biennale adds contemporary music, theatre and dance, and churches host Vivaldi concerts most evenings.

Cannes's famous film festival is closed to most visitors apart from the screenings on the beach. Concerts at the Palais, the regional philharmonic, summer music in the castle courtyard on Le Suquet and the jazz festival at nearby Juan-les-Pins make a modest programme.

Neither has a bathing tradition, and in both the spas are in hotels. Cannes adds seawater thalassotherapy along the coast, and in spring and autumn it offers an easy routine of coffee on a terrace and evening walks by the bay.

Venice offers quiet instead: no traffic, and slow, residential corners in Castello, Cannaregio and Giudecca. Real thermal pools are about an hour away at Abano Terme. Both towns are poor places to rest in their busiest weeks.