Geneva or Lucerne?

Neither city has a beach in the usual sense, but Geneva makes more of its lake. At the Bains des Pâquis, people dive off a concrete jetty in the harbour with the Jet d'Eau in view, Genève-Plage adds pools and lawns, and in a good August the water reaches about 23°C. The warmer summers also give Geneva a slightly longer swimming season.

In Lucerne the water stays a few degrees cooler. Swimming happens at the Lido, the old wooden lake baths and the grass at Ufschötti, with mountains straight across the water. It is a lovely place for a dip between excursions, but in either city the shore is lawns and jetties rather than sand.

Geneva eats far better. Its cooking leans French, with lake perch fillets, longeole sausage and cardoons in winter, and the canton's own Chasselas and Gamay are on the wine lists. Thanks to the international organisations there is a wide range of cuisines, plus serious fine dining in Carouge and the Old Town.

Lucerne serves good Swiss comfort food, such as Chügelipastete, rösti and lake whitefish in guild-house taverns, but the range is narrow. Many of the places around the Chapel Bridge cater to coach tours. Both cities are expensive and have little street food, but only Geneva has the variety for a trip planned around eating.

The two are level on sightseeing but very different in character. Geneva's sights are about ideas and institutions: Calvin's St Pierre Cathedral with its excavations below, the Reformation Wall, the Palais des Nations, the Red Cross museum and the science at CERN. It is a city for curious minds, and it fills two or three days.

Lucerne's appeal is the scene itself. The covered Chapel Bridge, the frescoed medieval squares, the towers of the Musegg Wall and the carved Lion Monument make a postcard townscape, and the Rosengart Collection's Picasso and Klee add a serious art stop. You can see it in a day or two.

Neither city is a night-out destination, but Geneva has more going on. The Pâquis behind the station keeps its bars busy late, Carouge has wine-bar terraces, and the alternative cultural centres in Plainpalais and Jonction run club nights with a small electronic scene.

In Lucerne, evenings mostly mean a drink on the riverside and a few cocktail bars in the Neustadt, and the lakefront is empty by midnight. The exception is Fasnacht, when the whole town stays out in costume until dawn.

Both are excellent bases for the outdoors, but Lucerne has the mountains on its doorstep. Pilatus by the steep cogwheel railway, Rigi's ridge walks, the open-top cable car on the Stanserhorn and the year-round snow on Titlis are all close, and the lake steamers let you combine boat, rail and hiking in one day. The one catch is low cloud, which can hide the peaks for days.

Geneva looks at its mountains more than it climbs them. The Salève cable car and the Jura forests are close, Mont Blanc shows at the end of the lake on clear days, and the lake is good for sailing and paddleboarding, but Chamonix and the high Alps take about an hour by road.

Both have long lists of outings, and the difference is where they lead. From Geneva, boats and trains follow the lake to Nyon, Lausanne, the Lavaux vineyard terraces and Château de Chillon, and because the border is so close you can also visit France: medieval Yvoire by boat and Annecy's canals by road.

Lucerne sits at the centre of the Swiss rail network, so Zurich, Bern and Basel are each under an hour away. Its own lake takes you into the founding story of Switzerland at the Rütli meadow and the William Tell country around Altdorf.

Lucerne is the easier place to keep children busy. The Swiss Museum of Transport, with its trains, planes and planetarium, fills a whole day, and the Glacier Garden's mirror maze, the Goldau wildlife park and the cogwheel trains and summer toboggan run on Pilatus add more. Many of those trips depend on clear skies, though.

Geneva has the Natural History Museum's big animal dioramas, the small enclosures at the Bois de la Bâtie and rides on the yellow harbour boats, but after two or three days it runs thin. Neither city has a zoo or an aquarium.

Both are easy to get around, but they work differently. Geneva is a city you can walk across, from the station over the bridges to the Old Town and on to Carouge, with frequent trams and buses for the international district and CERN. The yellow harbour boats belong to the same network, the airport is a few minutes by train, and regional rail runs into the French suburbs. A car only helps for the mountains.

Lucerne is smaller still, and most of it is a short, flat walk along the Reuss from the lakefront, where the station, the boat piers and the edge of the Old Town sit side by side. The excursions start from the same spot. Steamers leave in front of the station and link up with trains, cogwheel railways and cable cars into the mountains. These are separate lines with their own tickets, but they connect reliably once you have worked out the timetables, so you never need a car.

For shopping, Geneva is in a different league. The Rue du Rhône holds the flagships of the major watch houses and luxury brands, and beyond them are Carouge's craft and design workshops and the antiques at the Plainpalais flea market.

Lucerne's watch and jewellery houses on Schwanenplatz are mainly there for tour groups, alongside army knives and cuckoo clocks. There is little fashion or design, and the main streets are short.

Both rank among the most expensive places to visit in Europe, and neither can be done cheaply. What differs is how you soften the cost. Geneva's free city museums, free local transport for hotel guests and the option of sleeping or eating in France help a little.

In Lucerne, the mountain railways and cable cars that make the trip worthwhile take a large share of the budget, so a Swiss travel pass and supermarket picnics by the lake are the main ways to save.

Lucerne has the bigger name in classical music. The Lucerne Festival brings the world's leading orchestras to Jean Nouvel's lakefront hall, which is known for its acoustics, mostly in late summer. Outside the festival weeks, the programme is that of a small cultured city.

Geneva's calendar is steadier through the year. The Grand Théâtre runs a full season of opera and ballet, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande plays in the gilded Victoria Hall, and there is French-language theatre and dance at the Bâtiment des Forces Motrices in the middle of the Rhône.

Geneva has the better bathing tradition. In winter the Bains des Pâquis becomes a sauna and hammam, and regulars go straight from the heat into the cold lake. The spa towns of Évian and Divonne are an easy trip across the border.

Lucerne's best soak is a mineral bath high on the Rigi, about an hour away by boat and cogwheel train, and in town it is down to hotel spas. Its calm comes from steamer afternoons and quiet evenings, but the Old Town gets crowded at midday when the tour groups arrive.