Ghent or Paris?

Neither city has sea swimming on its doorstep, but Ghent is closer to the coast. Trains reach Ostend in about an hour, and the coast tram links the wide sands and dunes from De Panne to Knokke. On hot days, the lake at the Blaarmeersen has a sandy shore and supervised swimming without leaving town.

Paris spreads summer sand along the Seine and has outdoor swimming on the Bassin de la Villette and in the river itself, as well as some handsome Art Deco pools. Its nearest real beaches, at Deauville and Trouville in Normandy, are about two hours away, and the Channel is just as cool as the North Sea.

Ghent eats well within a narrower range: waterzooi, beef stewed in dark beer, grey shrimp croquettes and frites in paper cones. Its restaurants have a long meat-free habit, which helps vegetarians. Beer is where it shines, with long lists of Trappist and lambic beers in the old cafés around the Vrijdagmarkt and the Patershol.

People travel to Paris just for the food. Every neighbourhood has its own bakery, cheese shop and morning market, and the cooking runs from zinc-counter bistros to haute cuisine, with natural wine bars and inventive neo-bistros across the east of the city. Couscous in Belleville, pho in the 13th and pastry treated as an art form give it a range Ghent cannot match.

Ghent's strength is a compact medieval centre that is still lived in: the guildhalls of the Graslei and Korenlei, the Gravensteen castle in the middle of town, and the van Eycks' Ghent Altarpiece in St Bavo's Cathedral. One masterpiece, a handful of good museums and a beautiful skyline fill two or three days well.

Paris works on a different scale. The Louvre alone could fill a week, and the Orsay, the Orangerie, the Musée Rodin and the Musée de Cluny would each be a headline anywhere else. Then there are the Sainte-Chapelle, Notre-Dame and Haussmann's boulevards. It is the city for a long, museum-heavy trip, with the queues that come with that.

Ghent's nights are shaped by its students. In term time the Overpoort runs loud and late, while the cafés of the Vrijdagmarkt and Oudburg suit a long evening over strong beer. The clubs are few and small, and the big moment is the ten-day Gentse Feesten street party in July.

Paris offers far more. Evenings move from wine bars and terraces to the crowded bars of Oberkampf, Belleville and the Canal Saint-Martin, with cocktails in South Pigalle and a lively gay scene in the Marais. Once the bars close, the clubs and riverside barges keep playing house and techno until dawn, though the doors can be selective.

Ghent's outdoors is flat and farmed, best seen by bike along the Leie to villages such as Sint-Martens-Latem, or with binoculars in the Bourgoyen-Ossemeersen wetlands. The Zwin bird reserve and the coastal dunes are further out. It is gentle cycling country, without much variety.

Paris gives an active visitor more. The Buttes-Chaumont has cliffs and a lake, and the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes are big enough for long runs and rowing. The forest of Fontainebleau, about forty minutes away by train, has marked trails through oak and pine and sandstone boulders that are famous among climbers.

Both are excellent bases, and the difference is in the kind of trip. From Ghent the trips are to other historic cities close together: Bruges in under half an hour, Brussels and Antwerp soon after, plus Mechelen, Leuven and the First World War cemeteries around Ypres. Many visitors stay there because it is a calmer base for Flanders.

From Paris the trips are mostly to palaces and countryside: Versailles, Fontainebleau and Chantilly, Chartres cathedral and Monet's garden at Giverny. Fast trains reach the Champagne houses of Reims and, through Tours, the Loire châteaux. Lille and Brussels are within easy reach of both cities.

Ghent is an easy, safe city for children because cars are kept out of most of the centre. The Gravensteen's battlements, canal boat trips, the old toys at the House of Alijn and the lake beach at the Blaarmeersen will fill a couple of days, though cobbles make pushchairs hard work.

Paris has far more aimed at children: Disneyland and Parc Astérix just outside the city, the Cité des Sciences, the zoo at Vincennes, and the skeletons at the Jardin des Plantes. In the parks there are toy sailboats and puppet shows. The trade-off is everyday life, with metro stairs, packed trains and small hotel rooms.

Ghent is small and simple. The flat, largely car-free centre takes minutes to cross on foot, bikes are the local way of getting about, and trams cover the rest. The one awkward part is that Gent-Sint-Pieters station is a twenty-minute walk from the old centre.

Paris is better at moving people around a much larger city. Its centre is one of the great places to walk, and the metro is so dense that a station is rarely far away, while the RER runs straight to the airports, Versailles and Disneyland. Expect long corridors, stairs without lifts, rush-hour crowds and pickpockets on the busiest lines.

In Ghent, shopping fills the gaps between sights. Familiar chains line the Veldstraat, independent fashion and design sit in the Serpentstraat and the Onderbergen, and the student streets around the Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat have vintage and second-hand. The markets are part of the pleasure, with the weekend flea market around Sint-Jacobs and the Sunday flower market on the Kouter. The best things to take home are edible: cuberdons, chocolate, beer and the city's strong mustard.

Ghent's flea market makes a nice weekend browse. The one at Saint-Ouen, just beyond the northern edge of Paris, is a vast maze of antiques dealers you can lose a whole day in. At the other end of the scale, the luxury houses keep their flagships on Avenue Montaigne, Galeries Lafayette under its glass dome and Le Bon Marché are worth seeing even if you buy nothing, and the Marais is full of independent designers. Add the covered passages near the Grands Boulevards and the bouquinistes' green boxes along the Seine, and Paris goes far deeper than Ghent at every level, from luxury down to old prints.

Neither is a budget city, but Ghent is easier on the wallet. Its hotel rooms are moderately priced for a historic city, except during the Gentse Feesten. The centre needs no transport, St Bavo's is free to enter, and frites stands and bakeries keep lunch cheap, though sit-down dinners with Belgian beer soon add up.

Paris costs more on almost every front. Rooms are expensive and often small, especially in the central arrondissements, and the big museums charge full admission. You can save with the city's free permanent collections, market picnics by the river and a room in the outer arrondissements.

Ghent has a serious scene for its size. Its nineteenth-century opera house is one half of the Flemish national company, NTGent is known abroad for bold, political theatre, and De Bijloke stages early music in a medieval hospital. Most theatre is in Dutch, and in July there are free stages all over the centre.

Paris is a reason to travel in itself. It has ballet at the Palais Garnier, opera at the Bastille, orchestras at the Philharmonie, and chamber concerts by candlelight in the Sainte-Chapelle. Add the Comédie-Française, cellar jazz around the rue des Lombards and cabaret in Pigalle, but expect most theatre to be in French.

Neither city has a bathing tradition, and for actual treatments Paris has the edge. The tiled steam rooms and mint tea at the Grande Mosquée's hammam, smaller neighbourhood hammams and plenty of day spas give you real places to go. Ghent has little beyond a few private saunas and hotel spas.

Ghent wins on pace instead. The enclosed beguinage gardens, quiet Sundays and slow walks along the Coupure feel restful in a way that loud, crowded Paris rarely does outside a chair in the Luxembourg gardens.