Colmar or Luxembourg?

Neither city is a swimming destination, but Luxembourg has more to offer on a hot day. The Upper Sûre reservoir has proper bathing spots along wooded shores, and the gravel lakes at Remerschen are easy to reach by free train and bus. In Colmar you are mostly limited to municipal pools or a small mountain lake up in the Vosges.

Colmar has more of a food culture. Its wood-panelled winstubs serve baeckeoffe, choucroute and tarte flambée, with munster cheese from the valleys above town, and the Riesling and Gewurztraminer come from slopes you can see from the streets. Outside regional cooking the choice is narrow, though.

Luxembourg's cooking is more of a mix: French in the smart dining rooms, Portuguese and Italian in the neighbourhood places, and only a few hearty local dishes such as smoked pork with broad beans. It has a serious fine-dining tier, but casual meals cost more and offer less character than an evening in Colmar.

Both are compact and can be seen in two days, but Colmar has the slightly stronger set. Its painted half-timbered streets, the Maison Pfister and the Koïfhus survive as one unbroken old town. It also has the Unterlinden Museum, whose Isenheim Altarpiece is reason enough to travel.

Luxembourg is impressive mostly for its setting rather than its art. You can walk through the Bock casemates and along the Corniche above the Grund, and MUDAM's contemporary art on Kirchberg adds a modern side that Colmar does not have.

Luxembourg has the livelier evenings, though it is no party city. The old brewery at Rives de Clausen has bars and a couple of clubs close together, the Grund has stone-walled pubs, and an international crowd fills them on Thursdays and Fridays.

In Colmar the evening usually ends after a long dinner and a last glass of wine by the canals. The streets empty early, and for a real night out people take the train to Strasbourg.

Colmar has the better scenery nearby. Paths through the vines start half an hour from town, and the Route des Crêtes climbs past the Hohneck and the Grand Ballon, with views to the Black Forest and sometimes the Alps. There are glacial lakes, summer pastures and some skiing in winter.

Luxembourg's green spaces begin closer, with wooded gorges running through the city itself. The mossy sandstone passages of the Müllerthal are a fine day's walk, but this is hill country with no mountains.

Both are excellent bases, and Colmar is the stronger one. Eguisheim, Riquewihr and Kaysersberg are only a few kilometres apart along the wine route, Strasbourg is half an hour by train, and Basel and Freiburg are about an hour away. The villages are far easier to reach with a car or a bike than by the sparse buses.

Luxembourg's trips within the country cost nothing to reach, because free trains and buses run to Vianden's hilltop castle, Echternach and the Moselle wine villages. Free travel stops at the border, so you need a normal ticket for Roman Trier and for Metz with its golden cathedral, each under an hour away. Luxembourg is the easier base without a car, though there is a little less choice than in Alsace.

Colmar is the better place for children, provided you have a car. Flat lanes, boat rides and nesting storks keep younger children busy in town. Outside it are the Hunawihr stork and otter park, the free-roaming macaques at Kintzheim, the Mulhouse train museum and Europa-Park about an hour away.

Luxembourg is calm and has lifts suitable for buggies, and the casemate tunnels feel like an adventure. Beyond that there is only the small Parc Merveilleux. It is a good place for a few days with children, but not enough for a week.

Luxembourg is far easier to get around. Trams, buses and trains are free across the whole country, public lifts and a funicular connect the upper and lower town, and you can reach Vianden or the Moselle without driving.

Colmar's centre is just as easy to walk and the station is close. The problem is the countryside: buses to the wine villages and the Vosges are infrequent, so most visitors hire a car or cycle along the vineyard roads.

There is little to separate them overall, but the shopping is very different. Colmar is the place for things to take home: wine bought from the grower, Soufflenheim pottery, kougelhopf moulds, printed table linen and the Christmas markets spread across several squares. Luxembourg's Grand-Rue offers luxury fashion labels, and the Villeroy & Boch outlet is the local speciality.

Colmar is much cheaper. Set lunches, regional wine and village tastings are reasonably priced, although rooms in the old town get expensive and book out during the Christmas market weeks.

Luxembourg is expensive throughout, with hotels aimed at business travellers and restaurant bills well above the norm. Free transport and free museums help, and so does staying in Trier or Metz and coming in by train.

Luxembourg wins easily here. The Philharmonie on Kirchberg has a resident orchestra and hosts touring soloists all year, the Grand Théâtre puts on visiting opera and dance, and Neimënster holds open-air concerts in summer.

Colmar's small Italian-style theatre and its July classical music festival are pleasant, but outside the festival weeks there is not much on, and serious opera means going to Strasbourg or Basel.

Luxembourg has something Colmar does not: Mondorf-les-Bains, a nineteenth-century thermal spa with mineral pools and saunas set in a park, half an hour from the city. In Colmar, relaxing means long lunches, quiet evenings by the canals and walks through the vines, with hotel spas as the only real treatment option.