French Riviera or Swiss Alps?

The French Riviera is a real seaside destination and the Swiss Alps are not. The Riviera has pebbles at Nice and Menton, sand along the Croisette, at Juan-les-Pins and at Pampelonne, and clear coves under the red Esterel rocks. You can swim from June into early October. The catch is that private concessions take up much of the sand, and the public beaches get very crowded in high summer.

In the Alps, swimming means lake lidos with jetties and lawns. The water is very clean but cool, around 20°C on Lake Thun or Lake Brienz in a warm August. Lake Lugano and Lake Maggiore in Ticino are a few degrees warmer. A swim there is a pleasant break from walking, not a reason to go.

The Riviera eats much better. Nice has its own cuisine of socca, pissaladière and stuffed vegetables, and the Cours Saleya market is full of olives, citrus and herbs. Serious restaurants line the stretch from Menton to Cannes. The thing to avoid is the tourist set menus on the seafront.

Alpine food is mostly hearty cheese dishes such as fondue, raclette and rösti, and it tastes best on a hut terrace at the top of a lift. The Valais wines are a real find, and Ticino's grotti add polenta and Merlot. Beyond that the choice is narrow, with no markets or street food, and in most villages you eat in hotel dining rooms.

For sightseeing, the Riviera has far more to offer. It holds one of Europe's best modern art collections in museums and chapels where the artists actually worked: Matisse and Chagall in Nice, Picasso in Antibes, and the Fondation Maeght near Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Add Nice's baroque old town, Monaco's palace and the Roman trophy at La Turbie, and you can fill a week.

In the Alps, the heritage sits in the landscape. You will find sgraffito houses in Guarda, the World Heritage Bernina railway, the castles of Bellinzona and Sion, and the Carolingian frescoes at Müstair. These make good stops on a hiking trip, but they will not fill one on their own.

The two go out in opposite seasons. The Riviera is busiest in summer, with beach clubs in Saint-Tropez and Monaco and late bars in Juan-les-Pins. Nice's old town and port keep pubs and wine bars open all year, so there is more choice overall. In the Alps, evenings mean winter après-ski in a few resorts, mostly Verbier and Zermatt, and summer hiking villages are asleep by eleven.

Both have mountains, but the Alps are on another scale. The Eiger and Jungfrau rise above the Lauterbrunnen valley, the Matterhorn stands over Zermatt and the Aletsch glacier stretches through Valais. Cable cars put you on high trails without a long climb. In winter, Zermatt, Verbier and St Moritz have some of the best skiing anywhere.

The Riviera's appeal is mountains meeting the sea. There are paths around Cap Ferrat and Cap d'Antibes, kayaking and diving off the Esterel, and the high Mercantour about one and a half hours inland. Walking is best in spring and autumn, because summer heat and wildfire closures shut some areas.

Both regions offer plenty of easy outings. The difference is in what kind of place you visit and how far you travel. From Nice, the coastal train reaches Villefranche, Monaco and Menton in well under an hour. Hill villages like Eze and Saint-Paul-de-Vence and the Italian market at Ventimiglia are also close, although many days end up as variations on a pretty village.

The Alps' outings are towns and lakes reached by scenic train. From the Bernese Oberland you can visit Bern's arcades, Thun's castle, Lucerne over the Brünig Pass, or Gruyères and the Château de Chillon further west. Journeys are longer, but the train ride is part of the day.

On the Riviera, a family trip centres on the sea. The gently shelving sand at Juan-les-Pins and Fréjus suits small children, and Monaco's aquarium is a rainy-day attraction the Alps cannot match. The practical side is harder going. July and August bring heat, traffic and expensive family rooms, and the hill villages are all steps and cobbles, so a pushchair is more trouble than help there.

The Alps are the easier choice with children. Grindelwald, Wengen and Saas-Fee have ski schools in winter, and in summer there are toboggan runs and playgrounds at the top of the lifts. A cogwheel train or a lake steamer is a treat in itself, and in the car-free villages children can walk about safely. With very young children, take some care with the altitude.

The Alps have one of the best mountain transport networks anywhere. Trains, postbuses, steamers and cable cars run on linked timetables, and resorts such as Zermatt and Mürren ban cars altogether. The weakness is distance, since crossing from the Bernese Oberland to the Engadine takes a long day.

The Riviera works well along its railway from Cannes to Menton, with Nice's tram and walkable centre at its heart. Away from the line it gets harder. Buses to the hill villages are slow, and the road to Saint-Tropez jams in summer, so a car helps inland even though parking is scarce.

The Riviera offers far more for shoppers. Cannes has boutiques on the Croisette and Monte-Carlo has them around the casino, and Nice has the region's department stores. Local crafts give the shopping its character: perfume in Grasse, bubbled glass in Biot, pottery in Vallauris, and Provençal markets with a Monday flea market on the Cours Saleya.

In the Alps, shopping is limited to a few luxury streets in St Moritz and Gstaad, plus watch and mountain-gear shops in Zermatt and Interlaken. The best things to bring home are alpine cheese, Valais wine and Brienz woodcarving.

Neither is a budget trip, but the Riviera is clearly easier on the wallet. Nice has a wide range of apartments and simple places serving socca and pizza. Regional trains are cheap, beaches and coastal paths are free, and travelling in May, June or September eases hotel prices.

The Alps cost more at almost every step. Hotels in Zermatt or St Moritz are expensive, so are hut meals, and cable-car tickets can cost more than the room. Self-catering, supermarket picnics, travel passes and quieter valleys like Goms or the Ticino side help, but only so much.

The Riviera has a resident arts scene. The gilded Monte-Carlo opera house and the Ballets de Monte-Carlo perform through the winter, and Nice has its own opera and orchestra. In summer, jazz festivals fill the pine grove at Juan-les-Pins and Place Masséna.

The Alps have only summer festivals, but some are excellent. The Verbier Festival and the Menuhin Festival around Gstaad bring top classical performers to tents and village churches. The rest of the year there is little beyond brass bands and alphorn evenings, with no opera or theatre.

The Alps are much the better place to rest. Leukerbad is a whole spa village with outdoor pools open in the snow, Vals has its stone thermal bath in the hillside, and Bad Ragaz and Scuol have centuries-old springs. Quiet car-free villages add to the calm.

On the Riviera, wellness means thalassotherapy in Monaco and on the capes, or spas at the grand hotels on Cap Ferrat. It is calmest in spring and autumn. In July and August the coast is loud, and the inland villages are the quieter option.