Edinburgh or Inverness?

Neither city is a beach destination, and the water is equally cold off both. The difference is the kind of shore. Edinburgh has a real town beach at Portobello, with a Victorian promenade a bus ride from the centre, and the wide East Lothian sands at Gullane and North Berwick a little further out.

Inverness has no beach in town. Its best sands, at Nairn and Rosemarkie, need a short drive, but a breezy walk along Chanonry Point may come with dolphins offshore.

Both cities cook from the same Scottish larder of west-coast shellfish, venison and Highland beef, and in both whisky is the heart of drinking. Edinburgh simply has more of it. A group of ambitious modern dining rooms in Leith, the New Town and Stockbridge gives you several evenings of real choice.

Inverness has a handful of good restaurants along the river and dependable pub plates of haddock and steak pie. After a couple of nights the choice runs out, and in summer the better tables need booking.

This is where the two differ most. Edinburgh's Old Town and New Town together make one of Europe's great historic townscapes, and the National Museum, the Scottish National Gallery and the Portrait Gallery give several days of indoor depth, most of it free.

Inverness has its red sandstone castle above the Ness, a cathedral, the Victorian Market and a compact museum of Highland and Gaelic history. Its most important site, the Culloden battlefield, lies outside town, and most of the region's heritage means driving out.

Both are pub cities at heart, but Edinburgh has far more range: Victorian bars on Rose Street, old drinking dens in the Grassmarket, cocktail basements around George Street and a late-night student strip in the Cowgate, with the whole centre staying out late in August. Inverness offers whisky bars and wood-panelled pubs around Church Street and the riverside, a couple of late bars, and weeknights that go quiet well before midnight.

Edinburgh is unusually green for a capital. You can climb Arthur's Seat between museum visits, and the Pentland Hills offer ridge walks on the edge of town. For the Highlands proper, though, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs are about two hours away.

From Inverness the big landscapes are close. Loch Ness and the Great Glen, the old pine forest of Glen Affric and the Cairngorm plateau are all within an hour, and Torridon and the road to Skye make a longer day out. The outdoors is the reason to stay here.

Edinburgh reaches other towns. Glasgow and Stirling are under an hour by train, Linlithgow Palace is on the way, and St Andrews and the Borders abbeys make fuller days, all easy from Waverley station in the centre.

Day trips from Inverness are to single sites: Urquhart Castle, Cawdor, Fort George, the Clava Cairns and the Speyside distilleries. They are rewarding, but there is no other city within reach and buses are thin, so most of these outings need a car or a tour.

Edinburgh has more for children on rainy days. The castle, the hands-on galleries of the National Museum, Dynamic Earth, Camera Obscura and the zoo are all close together, though the Old Town's steps and cobbles are hard going with a buggy.

Inverness is calmer and easier to manage, with the Ness Islands, playgrounds in Bught Park and the Aquadome pool, and hunting for the monster on Loch Ness goes down well with most ages. The Highland Wildlife Park and the forest adventure park are worth a trip, but both mean a drive.

Edinburgh's sights are close together but spread over hills, linked by bridges and stairways rather than level streets. A dense bus network and a tram from the airport cover the rest, and a car is more trouble than help in town.

Inverness has a flatter centre that you can walk end to end in twenty minutes, and scenic rail lines run from its central station. Beyond town, though, the glens and distilleries lie down single-track roads with few buses, so a hire car or booked tours become close to essential.

Edinburgh gives you several districts to browse. The chains are on Princes Street, the upmarket labels around George Street and St Andrew Square, the independents on the curving Victoria Street below the castle, and small boutiques and a Sunday market in Stockbridge. Kiltmakers and whisky shops with deep stocks of single malts are there for the Scottish buys, though the tartan shops along the Royal Mile vary a great deal.

In Inverness an hour or two covers it. The covered Victorian Market from the 1870s, Celtic-design silver jewellery and a second-hand bookshop in a former church are the best finds, and beyond the same tartan, tweed and whisky the rest is everyday high-street shopping.

Neither city is cheap, and in both the rooms are the main cost. Inverness is a little easier on the budget, and its rooms get much cheaper outside summer, though car hire, tours and distillery visits take back some of what you save.

Edinburgh's hotels are expensive all year and soar during the August festivals and Hogmanay. Free national museums, a free climb up Arthur's Seat and modest bus fares help, and late autumn and winter are the kindest times on the budget.

In August Edinburgh is in a different league, with the Fringe, the International Festival and the Military Tattoo running at once. Outside the festival it still has two resident orchestras, Scottish Opera and Scottish Ballet at the Festival Theatre, and strong drama at the Lyceum and the Traverse.

Inverness relies on Eden Court for touring theatre, dance and concerts, and has no resident orchestra or opera. Its stronger side is traditional music, with fiddle and accordion sessions in pubs most nights and Gaelic song at festivals and the summer Highland Games.

Neither city is somewhere to come for a spa break, and in both the serious pampering mostly happens in hotel spas. What differs is the character. Edinburgh has a couple of curiosities: the surviving Victorian Turkish baths inside Portobello's public swim centre, the modernist Royal Commonwealth Pool, and a hardy year-round sea-swimming habit along the coast. Its restful hours come out of season, in the Botanic Garden or by the Water of Leith, because in August the centre is too crowded for any real rest.

Inverness has nothing like that bathing history, only the Aquadome's pools and sauna in town and the spas of country-house hotels out towards Loch Ness. Its calm comes from the slow pace of a small riverside town, where an evening stroll round the Ness Islands and a whisky beside an open fire end the day.