Cologne or Lucerne?

Neither city is a beach destination, but Lucerne has a real swimming culture and Cologne does not. In Lucerne you can swim from the Lido, from the old wooden lake baths or from the lawns at Ufschötti, all close to the centre, in clean, calm water with mountains behind.

Cologne's Rhine is too fast and too busy for swimming, so a swim means going out to gravel-pit lakes such as Fühlinger See on the edge of the city. The water warms to the low 20s in midsummer in both places. What differs is how close it is and what you look at while you swim.

Cologne eats better and with more variety. The brewhouse ritual, with the Köbes swapping in fresh glasses of Kölsch until you cover yours with a beer mat, is an experience in itself. Ehrenfeld and the Belgian Quarter add Turkish, Middle Eastern and modern bistro cooking.

Lucerne sticks to fondue, rösti, lake perch and Chügelipastete, served in guild houses and wood-panelled taverns. The food is good but the range is narrow and the prices are high, and many places near the Chapel Bridge cook for tour groups. The real pleasure there is a coffee on a terrace by the Reuss.

Cologne has more to see. Beyond the cathedral and the Shrine of the Three Kings there are twelve Romanesque churches and Roman remains. It also has museums of real weight in Museum Ludwig, the Wallraf-Richartz and Kolumba. Its weakness is the plain post-war townscape around them.

Lucerne is the reverse: fewer sights, but a medieval Old Town that is still whole. It has the Chapel Bridge, the Water Tower, the climbable towers of the Musegg Wall and the Lion Monument. The Rosengart's Picasso and Klee are a fine extra, and a day or two covers it all.

This is one of the sharpest differences between the two. Cologne likes to go out. Evenings run from the brewhouses to cocktail bars in the Belgian Quarter, the student crowd on Zülpicher Strasse, clubs in Ehrenfeld's old factories and the large gay scene around Rudolfplatz. Carnival turns the whole city into one long party.

In Lucerne, an evening out usually means a drink by the water and an early night, with only a small club scene near the station. Fasnacht is its one wild week. The rest of the year, choose it for calm evenings rather than a night out.

Lucerne is in another league. The lake, Pilatus, Rigi and the Stanserhorn are on the doorstep and reached by cogwheel railways and cable cars. Titlis, with its glacier, is about an hour away, and winter brings skiing. Combining a steamer, a train and a hike in one day is easy.

Cologne is flat but green, with the Grüngürtel parks, long cycle paths along the Rhine, and good walking in the Siebengebirge and the Eifel within an hour. It suits gentle walkers and cyclists, not anyone looking for mountain views.

Both cities make excellent bases, with fast trains in every direction. The difference is the kind of outing. From Cologne the trips are to other cities and to history: Bonn, Charlemagne's chapel in Aachen, the Brühl palaces, the castle towns of the Rhine Gorge, and Maastricht or Brussels across the border.

From Lucerne the lake is an outing in itself, with steamers to Weggis, the Rütli meadow and the William Tell country around Altdorf. Bern, Basel and Zurich are each under an hour away by train.

Both cities work well with children. Cologne has more places built for them: a zoo with an aquarium, the Chocolate Museum, the cable car over the Rhine and, south at Brühl, the big Phantasialand theme park. Carnival, though, is a time to avoid with small children.

In Lucerne the main draw is the Swiss Museum of Transport, and the rest of the fun is the journeys themselves: steamers, cogwheel trains and the summer toboggan run on Pilatus. These depend on the weather and cost more, but the small, safe centre and the lakeside lawns make for easy days.

Lucerne is the easier of the two. The station, the boat piers and the Old Town are all together on the lakefront, and most sights are a short, flat walk away. Boats, trains and cable cars all use the same integrated Swiss tickets, so a mountain excursion is as simple to arrange as a trip across town.

Cologne is easy too, with the station beside the cathedral and a walkable centre. Getting to Ehrenfeld or the zoo, though, means trams and Stadtbahn trains that can be crowded and irregular, on a network map that takes some working out.

Cologne has more to offer. Schildergasse and Hohe Strasse form a full high street of chain stores and department stores, while Ehrenstrasse and the Belgian Quarter have independent fashion and design shops. Eau de Cologne from the historic perfume houses and the Advent Christmas markets give it a local character.

Shopping in Lucerne mostly means watches and jewellery on Schwanenplatz, along with army knives, chocolate and souvenirs. It's a natural stop if you want a Swiss watch, but there is little for clothes or homeware.

Cologne is far kinder to the wallet. Brewhouse meals and public transport are fairly priced, and the cathedral and many churches are free to enter. The catch is hotel rates during the big trade fairs and Carnival.

Lucerne is very expensive by any measure. Rooms, everyday meals and the mountain railways all weigh heavily. A Swiss travel pass and picnics by the lake trim the bill, but they don't make it cheap.

Cologne has a full programme on any night of the year, while Lucerne builds to one late-summer peak. In Cologne the opera and the Schauspiel share Offenbachplatz, and the Gürzenich and WDR orchestras play the Philharmonie beside the cathedral. Ehrenfeld and the Südstadt have jazz, electronic music and small club gigs most evenings, and the Carnival sessions add their own tradition of dialect song.

Lucerne comes into its own during the Lucerne Festival, when leading international orchestras and soloists fill Jean Nouvel's lakefront hall. It is worth planning a trip around. For the rest of the year the concert hall, the city theatre and the Guggenmusik brass bands at Fasnacht make a good but modest programme, with little live music on an ordinary night.

Cologne unwinds the German way, in the sauna. Locals spend weekend afternoons in big sauna complexes with steam rooms and cold plunges, and the mineral-spring thermal bath in the Rheinpark looks across the river to the cathedral. Aachen's hot springs, used since Roman times, are under forty minutes by train. The busy centre is the part you have to escape.

Lucerne's calm comes from the lake, not from bathing. It has no bathhouse tradition of its own beyond hotel spas and Mario Botta's mineral bath high on the Rigi. Its slow pleasures are the lakeside promenades, the old wooden lake baths in summer and a steamer trip spent doing nothing but watching the shore.