Dijon or Interlaken?

Neither is a beach destination, but Interlaken gives you better swimming. In July and August you can swim from the grassy lidos and shingle shores of Lake Thun around Neuhaus, or brave the cold glacial turquoise of Lake Brienz at Bönigen, with snow peaks behind you.

Dijon has only Lac Kir, a reservoir on the western edge of town with a supervised patch of lawn and sand. Beyond that, a swim means a municipal or hotel pool.

Food is one of the main reasons to choose Dijon. It sits at the head of Burgundy, with boeuf bourguignon, jambon persillé, snails and gougères, its own mustard and cassis, and the iron market hall of Les Halles stacked with Bresse poultry and Époisses. Wine bars pour village Burgundies by the glass, and the Cité de la Gastronomie fills the old hospital with tastings and cookery.

Interlaken feeds people well enough but gives them little to remember. Fondue, rösti and raclette sit beside Indian and Asian places for the international crowd. The better meals come from the mountains around it: dairy cheese and hut terraces above Grindelwald or Mürren.

The gap here is wide. Dijon was the capital of the Valois dukes, and its palace holds one of France's oldest museums, with the mourner-ringed ducal tombs as its treasure. Around it lie Renaissance mansions, Notre-Dame with its lucky owl, Saint-Bénigne's crypt and Sluter's Well of Moses, enough for two or three full days.

Interlaken was built as a base for the mountains and has almost nothing to see beyond the grand hotels and Kursaal on the Höheweg and a few timber houses in Unterseen. Visitors who want history take the train to Bern or Thun.

Neither is a place for big nights, but Dijon has more going on after dark thanks to its university. Rue Berbisey's small bars and the terraces around Place Émile Zola make for a long evening of wine, beer and late dinners, at least during term time.

Interlaken goes to bed early because its visitors are up for trains and paragliding. You will find a few backpacker pubs and basement clubs, the casino in the Kursaal and a drink on the Höheweg, and little else.

Interlaken has some of the most dramatic scenery in Europe within an hour's ride. The Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, the sheer Lauterbrunnen valley, Trümmelbach's falls inside the rock and the Jungfraujoch above the Aletsch glacier are all reached by train or cable car. It is also a major centre for paragliding, canyoning and rafting, and for skiing in winter, though low cloud can hide the peaks.

Dijon's outdoors is gentle and pleasant: climbing and walking in the Combe à la Serre and Combe de Lavaux, flat cycling along the canal towpath and the vineyard ride to Beaune.

Both make excellent bases, but the outings are of different kinds. From Dijon, days out mean wine and abbeys: the Route des Grands Crus through Gevrey-Chambertin and Vougeot to walled Beaune, Fontenay's Cistercian abbey, and Semur-en-Auxois or Alésia. Much of it is easiest by car, bike or small tour.

From Interlaken the outings are towns and lakes, all by rail or boat. You can reach Bern's arcaded old town in under an hour, ride paddle steamers to the castles at Spiez, Oberhofen and Thun, see woodcarving at Brienz and the Ballenberg open-air museum, or take the scenic line to Lucerne.

Interlaken is the better place for children, because the journey up the mountain is the fun. Rack railways and gondolas lead to summit stations with playgrounds and summer toboggan runs, and the St Beatus caves and the farm animals at Ballenberg seldom disappoint. Rainy days and very high altitudes are the weak points.

Dijon is calm and easy with a pushchair, with the planetarium at the Jardin de l'Arquebuse, the lawns of the Parc de la Colombière and paddling at Lac Kir. Most of its days, though, are built around tastings and galleries.

Both centres are small enough to walk. Interlaken pulls ahead on the wider network, where mainline trains, narrow-gauge mountain railways, cog lines, gondolas and lake steamers connect so well that the whole Jungfrau region needs no car, although the popular mountain trains get crowded in summer.

Dijon has two tram lines, regional trains to Beaune and fast trains to Paris, so the city and the main wine town are easy to reach. The vineyard villages away from the railway, though, need a hire car, a bike or a tour.

Dijon is the better place to shop, as long as you mostly want things to eat and drink. Mustard in dozens of flavours, pain d'épices, cassis, Burgundy from cellar merchants and cheese around Les Halles fill the bags, and Rue de la Liberté and its side lanes add a department store, antiques and independents.

Interlaken's Höheweg is aimed at tour groups, with big watch and jewellery stores, army knives, cuckoo clocks and chocolate. Carved wood from Brienz is the one local craft worth buying.

Dijon costs far less. Hotels are moderate, bistro set lunches are a good way to eat well, and wine by the glass is cheap for France. The bill grows mainly when you add fine dining and cellar tours.

Interlaken charges full Swiss prices for beds, meals and drinks, and the mountain railways and cable cars that are the point of coming, the Jungfraujoch above all, are very expensive. Hostels, picnics and transport passes help, but there is no cheap way to see the region properly.

Dijon has a real season. The Opéra de Dijon stages opera, concerts and dance in the old Grand Théâtre and the acoustically admired Auditorium, alongside a national drama centre and a venue for touring bands. That programme follows the academic year and thins out in summer.

Interlaken is the reverse, with its main performance in summer: the open-air William Tell, played by local amateurs in the woods, plus folklore evenings with alphorns and yodelling. For more serious music you have to go to Bern.

For a restful stay with a little pampering, Interlaken has the edge, though the calm is found around the town more than in it. Dijon's rest comes from its pace: long lunches, quiet squares and slow afternoons among the vines. Beyond that it has only a few hotel spas, some offering grape-based treatments, and no bathing tradition of its own.

In Interlaken, several of the grand hotels on the Höheweg have sizeable spas, and the town has a public pool with a wellness area. The centre is busy with coach groups, so the real calm lies beyond it: early mornings on the lakeshore, slow steamer crossings, or a night up in Wengen or Mürren.