Dolomites or Swiss Alps?

Neither is a swimming destination, but the Swiss Alps give you a little more water to work with. Most lakeside towns have a lido with jetties and diving boards, from Lake Thun and Lake Brienz below the Jungfrau to the Caumasee near Flims. To the south, Ticino's Lake Lugano and Lake Maggiore warm to about 23°C.

In the Dolomites, the famous high lakes such as Braies and Carezza are for rowing and photographs rather than bathing. The real swim is Lake Caldaro on the wine route, which gets about as warm as the Ticino lakes, or a drive from Trento to the top of Lake Garda.

The Dolomites eat better and with more variety, because two traditions meet at the table. You get South Tyrolean speck, canederli and strudel, Ladin dishes in Gardena and Badia, and Trentino polenta and trout, followed by a properly Italian espresso. Autumn Törggelen evenings of new wine and chestnuts, and the cluster of high-end kitchens in Alta Badia, give food lovers a reason to plan the days around meals.

Swiss mountain food is cheese first: fondue, raclette in Valais, rösti and Graubünden air-dried beef, best eaten on a hut terrace. Valais wines such as Petite Arvine are a real find. Outside Zermatt, St Moritz and Gstaad, though, most villages offer only a handful of hotel dining rooms.

The Dolomites have the stronger valley towns. Bolzano's arcaded centre and the museum that holds Ötzi, Trento's cathedral and the frescoed Castello del Buonconsiglio, and Bressanone's baroque cathedral give a rainy day real substance. First World War tunnels on the high passes add to them.

Swiss heritage is spread through the landscape instead: sgraffito houses in Guarda and Zuoz, the Albula and Bernina railway lines, and the castles of Sion and Bellinzona. Müstair's Carolingian frescoes stand out, but there is less here to fill a whole day of sightseeing.

Both regions go to bed early, but the Swiss Alps have more going on at night once the snow arrives. In high season Verbier keeps a few clubs open past midnight, and Zermatt has a cluster of bars at the foot of the pistes. St Moritz and Gstaad offer a dressier evening in hotel bars.

Dolomite après-ski in Selva, Ortisei, Canazei and Cortina usually winds down by early evening, and Bolzano and Trento have wine bars rather than late venues. In summer, villages on both sides are quiet by eleven.

Here the two are equals, so the choice is between two kinds of mountain. The Dolomites have pale limestone towers rising out of meadows, such as the Tre Cime, the Sassolungo and Seceda. There is easy walking on the Alpe di Siusi, long hut-to-hut routes such as the Alta Via 1, and via ferrate whose first cables date from the First World War. In winter, the Sella Ronda circles a single massif.

The Swiss Alps are bigger and icier. You get the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, the Matterhorn and the Aletsch glacier, with guided glacier tours and paragliding, and ibex and chamois in the Swiss National Park.

Days out are just as good on both sides, but they lead to different places. From Bolzano you can easily reach Merano, Bressanone and Trento. Verona and the top of Lake Garda are about an hour and a half away, Innsbruck about two hours, and Venice is possible at a stretch. That is a stronger list of famous destinations than the Swiss one.

The Swiss Alps offer more and smaller places, and the train reaches each of them: Bern and Thun from the Bernese Oberland, Lucerne over the Brünig Pass, Gruyères, Lavaux and Chillon to the west, and Lugano and Bellinzona to the south. Dolomite outings from the high valleys, by contrast, begin with a hairpin pass road.

Both suit families about equally well, and neither has a zoo or a theme park. The Dolomites have the gentler high walking, with nearly flat paths across the Alpe di Siusi and the Armentara meadows, huts with farm animals, and hotels built around children's clubs.

In Switzerland the transport is the attraction: cable cars, cogwheel trains and lake steamers, plus the farm animals at Ballenberg. Car-free villages such as Wengen and Zermatt let children roam, though very small ones need more care with the altitude.

This is one of the clearest gaps between the two. In the Swiss Alps, trains, postbuses, steamers and lifts run on connected timetables, and almost every village can be reached without a car. Zermatt, Wengen, Mürren and Saas-Fee ban private cars outright. Only the long hops between regions are slow.

The Dolomites work well within a single valley, with South Tyrol's trains and buses covered by one pass. Crossing between valleys, though, means slow and crowded pass roads, and Cortina has no station at all. Most visitors who want to see several areas end up hiring a car.

Neither suits a shopping trip, but the Dolomites have a little more worth browsing. Ortisei's woodcarving workshops, the old shops under Bolzano's arcades on the Laubengasse, and the Advent markets of Bolzano, Merano, Bressanone and Brunico all give real reasons to stop.

Swiss resort shopping is mostly luxury boutiques in St Moritz and Gstaad, and watch and mountain-gear shops in Zermatt and Interlaken. On both sides the best things to take home are edible: speck and grappa in Italy, and dairy cheese, Valais wine and air-dried meat in Switzerland.

Neither is cheap, but the gap between them is wide. Cortina and Alta Badia are costly at peak times, but Fassa, Fiemme, Bolzano and Trento cost noticeably less, hut meals are fair, and June or September brings room rates down.

The same day in the mountains costs far more on the Swiss side. A room in Zermatt or St Moritz, a hut lunch and a lift ticket each cost well above their equivalents in Val Gardena, or even Cortina. A few cable-car and mountain-railway excursions can add up to more than the hotel. Self-catering, supermarket picnics and multi-day travel passes help, and Goms, Val Müstair and Ticino are a little gentler, but Switzerland has nothing like a cheaper Trentino valley.

The Swiss Alps have the bigger music festivals. The Verbier Festival brings top soloists for several weeks every July, and the Menuhin Festival fills the churches of the Saanenland around Gstaad, with smaller festivals in Davos and the Engadine. Outside summer, though, there is no resident opera or theatre.

The Dolomites work on a smaller scale. Bolzano and Trento keep orchestras and theatres going all year, and summer brings concerts on Trentino's alpine meadows, with Merano's festival in the autumn. Beyond those towns, little is on.

The Swiss Alps have a public bathing culture that the Dolomites largely lack. At Leukerbad's hot-spring pools below the cliffs, the stone bath at Vals, Bad Ragaz and Scuol, anyone can soak without choosing a hotel for it. The grand resort spas add more on top.

In the Dolomites, the spa usually belongs to your hotel: saunas facing rock walls, heated outdoor pools and the hay bath around Völs am Schlern. Merano's thermal baths and Levico Terme are the public exceptions, so choose your hotel with care.