Cape Town or Dakar?

The two are about equal for a beach trip but suit different travellers. Cape Town's Atlantic coves at Clifton and Camps Bay are among the most beautiful anywhere, but the water there is cold enough to take your breath away. The real swimming is at Muizenberg, St James and the False Bay tidal pools, and only in summer.

Dakar's beaches are part of everyday life rather than a view. N'Gor island has calm water a short pirogue ride away, and Yoff's long sands fill with Sunday football. The sea is warm from July, but that is the humid rainy season, and the water near the port is best avoided.

Cape Town has more to offer here. Cape Malay curries and bobotie from the Bo-Kaap give it a cooking style of its own, Bree Street and Woodstock have ambitious chefs, and the Winelands put Chenin Blanc and Pinotage on every table. Its one gap is a street-food culture you can graze through on foot.

That is exactly where Dakar is strong. Café Touba, attaya tea, fataya pastries, mutton from the dibiteries and fish grilled at Soumbédioune make the street the best place to eat. Thieboudienne and yassa are hearty home cooking, but fine dining and wine are scarce.

The two cities are about equal for sightseeing, and in both the strongest sights are memorials to hard history. In Cape Town, the ferry to Robben Island and the District Six Museum tell the story of apartheid, Zeitz MOCAA in its converted silo shows contemporary African art, and the Castle and the Company's Garden recall the Dutch settlement.

Dakar's counterpart is Gorée, a UNESCO-listed island whose House of Slaves confronts the Atlantic slave trade. The Museum of Black Civilisations and IFAN have stronger collections of traditional masks and textiles, and the Village des Arts lets you meet working artists. Either city needs only three or four days of sightseeing.

Both cities are good for a night out, but in different ways. Cape Town's evenings revolve around drinks: sundowners on the Camps Bay seafront, wine bars on Bree and Kloof Street, the backpacker crowd on Long Street and De Waterkant's gay bars. Outside summer it goes quiet.

Dakar starts later and is more about dancing than drinking. Clubs in Point E and Mermoz play Senegalese pop until dawn, and Almadies has lounges facing the ocean. In both cities you take a car between areas at night.

This is the biggest difference between the two cities. Cape Town sits inside a national park. You can climb Table Mountain from the centre, the fynbos is unique to the Cape, and Cape Point, Kirstenbosch, penguins, seals, whales, surfing and kitesurfing are all within a short drive.

Dakar's outdoors is mainly its coast: basalt cliffs, the Mamelles hills, and reef breaks at Ngor and Ouakam that make it a real surf city. Beyond that you have the seabirds of the Madeleine Islands and a vehicle safari at Bandia. The land inland is flat and gives little shade.

Cape Town is far better for day trips, mainly because of the Winelands under an hour away. Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and Paarl alone could fill several days. Whale watching at Hermanus and Tulbagh's Cape Dutch street add more variety.

Dakar's outings are fewer and longer. The best are the Petite Côte villages, the shell island of Joal-Fadiouth and the Great Mosque at Touba. Saint-Louis, the best of them, is too far for a single day.

Cape Town is much easier with children. The Two Oceans Aquarium, the Boulders penguins, the treetop walkway at Kirstenbosch and the warm False Bay pools fill several days, and many wine farms have play areas. With a car, the distances are manageable.

Dakar welcomes children warmly but has little made for them beyond N'Gor island, the Gorée ferry and the giraffes at Bandia. The heat, the dust, malaria precautions and the lack of pavements make most families base themselves by the sea or on the Petite Côte.

Neither city can be explored on foot, but you get around them differently. In Cape Town the answer is to hire a car. You drive on the left, the roads are good, and the coast roads are part of the pleasure. MyCiTi buses cover the Atlantic seaboard.

Dakar is a taxi city, where you agree the fare first, and its long peninsula means long rides. The TER railway and rapid bus are useful, but rush-hour traffic jams can be severe. Most visitors would not want to drive themselves.

From Cape Town you bring home South African design and wine. From Dakar you bring home clothes cut to fit you from cloth you chose yourself. In Cape Town, Woodstock's warehouses and the shops on Kloof Street sell ceramics, leather and fashion by local designers, the Waterfront mall covers the chains, and rooibos fits in any suitcase.

In Dakar you pick wax print or bazin at the HLM market, and a tailor makes it up within a few days. Carvings, leather and drums come from the artisan village at Soumbédioune, and you are expected to haggle for all of it.

Cape Town is the better value. Tasting menus, wine and car hire all cost far less than visitors from Europe or North America expect, and rooms become cheaper outside the December to January peak.

Dakar is cheap only if you live as locals do, eating street food and taking taxis. Comfortable hotels in Almadies and the Plateau charge close to southern European rates, and restaurants aimed at expats are similarly pricey, so a comfortable stay costs more than in Cape Town.

Dakar has more live music. Mbalax bands play the city's clubs well after midnight, the big names still give hometown shows, and sabar drumming spills into the streets at weddings and wrestling matches. The Sorano theatre presents the national ballet, though there is almost no opera or classical music.

Cape Town has Cape jazz, a large annual jazz festival and summer sunset concerts on the Kirstenbosch lawns. It also has the formal stages Dakar lacks: Artscape for opera and ballet, the Baxter for drama, and a resident philharmonic.

Neither city has a bathing tradition, but Cape Town is far easier to relax in. Long lunches on wine estates, morning swims in the False Bay tidal pools and the slow pace of Kalk Bay are the real attractions, and the spas on the grander estates are good value.

Dakar is noisy, congested and dusty, especially when the harmattan blows. Rest there usually means escaping to N'Gor island or the lagoons of the Petite Côte.