Colmar or Salzburg?

Neither city is a place for the water, but Salzburg at least has a real summer swim. The Salzkammergut lakes, Fuschlsee, Wolfgangsee and Mondsee, are under an hour away. Their clear water warms to roughly 20-24°C in midsummer, and you get in from lawns and wooden jetties rather than sand.

Colmar has nothing comparable. Swimming there means the municipal pools or a cold little lake high in the Vosges near the Route des Crêtes.

Colmar is the better city to eat in. Alsace cooking is the whole point: choucroute, baeckeoffe and tarte flambée in panelled winstubs, munster cheese from the valleys above town, and Riesling and Gewurztraminer from vineyards you can see from the edge of town, with cellar tastings in the villages a few minutes away.

Salzburg's strength is its coffee houses and beer gardens rather than its kitchens. The Augustiner monastery brewery in Mülln, with its barrel beer under the chestnuts, is the highlight. Schnitzel, Kasnocken and Salzburger Nockerl are filling, but many old-town menus are aimed at tour groups. Both cities offer little beyond their regional cooking.

Salzburg has the deeper set of sights. Its UNESCO-listed Baroque centre of cathedral, Residenz and arcaded squares sits below Hohensalzburg, one of Europe's largest intact medieval fortresses. Add the two Mozart houses, the rock-cut catacombs of St Peter and the gardens of Mirabell and Hellbrunn, and you have two or three full days.

Colmar's appeal is more concentrated. The painted half-timbered streets of Petite Venise and the tanners' quarter survive as a single late-medieval whole, and the Unterlinden Museum holds Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece, a painting worth the journey on its own. Two days covers it.

Both are early-to-bed towns, and Salzburg has a little more life after dark. Its beer halls fill long wooden tables with locals, and the student pubs along Rudolfskai keep going later at weekends during term. Colmar's evenings rarely go beyond dinner, a glass of wine on a summer terrace and a nightcap in a brasserie near Petite Venise. For a real night out, Colmar people take the short train to Strasbourg, while Salzburg's go to Munich.

Salzburg is the stronger outdoor base, because the mountains begin almost in the city. You can walk wooded ridges above the domes without leaving the centre, ride a cable car up the Untersberg to limestone paths at about 1,800m, or reach the Königssee fjord in Berchtesgaden National Park within half an hour. Proper ski areas are around an hour's drive away.

Colmar's landscape is gentler: waymarked paths through the vines between wine villages, then the rounded, forested Vosges with summer pastures, glacial lakes and views to the Black Forest. It is fine cycling country, but most of it needs a car.

Both are excellent bases, but the trips are different in kind. From Colmar you visit three countries' worth of old towns: the wine villages of Eguisheim, Riquewihr and Kaysersberg a few kilometres apart, Strasbourg half an hour by train, and Basel and Freiburg about an hour away.

Salzburg's outings are about lakes and salt. Hallstatt is the famous one, with quieter St Wolfgang and St Gilgen, the salt mines of Hallein and Berchtesgaden, and the clifftop fortress at Werfen, plus Munich by train. In both cases the villages are much easier to reach by car than by bus.

Families do equally well in both, but the outings differ. Colmar's centre is flat, which is easy with a pushchair, and children enjoy the boat rides and nesting storks. The bigger draws are outside town: the macaque park and eagle show near Kintzheim, the Mulhouse railway and car museums, and Europa-Park about an hour away, all of which need a car.

Salzburg keeps more inside the city, with Hellbrunn's trick fountains, the zoo, the hands-on Haus der Natur and the marionette theatre. Further out are the salt-mine slides and underground boat rides, but there is no theme park, and the cobbled slopes are hard work with a pushchair.

Salzburg is the easier city to get around without a car. Its pedestrianised centre is walkable, and a dense network of trolleybuses runs out to Hellbrunn and the Untersberg cable car, with direct trains to Munich and Vienna. Only the lake villages really call for hire wheels.

Colmar's old town and station are just as easy on foot, and regional trains reach Strasbourg and Mulhouse quickly. Beyond that, buses are sparse, so seeing the wine villages and the Vosges usually means hiring a car or riding a bike along the vineyard roads.

Salzburg offers rather more to buy. Getreidegasse, hung with wrought-iron guild signs, is a proper shopping street, and the city's speciality is Tracht: dirndls, loden jackets and leather goods, often made to measure in old-town workshops.

Colmar's shopping is almost all regional: wine bought from the grower, Soufflenheim pottery and kougelhopf moulds, printed table linen and gingerbread, plus Christmas markets spread over several squares. Neither city is the place for fashion or luxury brands.

Colmar is the cheaper stay. Set lunches, local wine and free or cheap village tastings keep daily costs moderate, and its only real cost problem is rooms during the Christmas market weeks and in summer.

Salzburg is expensive all year. Old-town hotels and restaurants cost a lot, and prices rise sharply during the festival and Advent. Staying across the river, eating in the beer halls and outer-district inns, and using the city card are the usual ways to keep the bill down.

This is where the two cities differ most. Salzburg is built around music: the Salzburg Festival fills the Grosses Festspielhaus and the Felsenreitschule with opera and orchestral concerts, Jedermann is played outdoors in front of the cathedral, and Mozart Week and the Easter Festival add two more seasons. Between festivals, the Mozarteum, the Landestheater and the Marionette Theatre keep the programme going.

Colmar has a small Italian-style theatre, a classical festival in early July and a jazz festival in autumn. Outside those weeks, serious opera or orchestral music means a trip to Strasbourg or Basel.

Salzburg is the better choice for a spa break. In town, the Paracelsus Bad has saunas and a pool looking out over the Kapuzinerberg. The salt-water spa town of Bad Reichenhall is twenty minutes away, and the Gastein valley's radon springs and Belle Époque spa hotels are within reach.

Colmar has only hotel spas. What it offers instead is an unhurried pace: quiet evenings by the canals and long lunches between walks in the vines.