Haarlem or Strasbourg?

Haarlem has real beaches nearby: Zandvoort's long sand by train and the quieter dune-backed strand at Bloemendaal aan Zee by bike. The North Sea is cool and often windy, so these are better for walking and sitting out than for swimming.

Strasbourg has no coast at all. Its summer swimming is in lifeguarded gravel-pit lakes such as the Baggersee, which has grassy banks and calm fresh water, and is fine for a hot afternoon.

This is one of the widest gaps between the two. Strasbourg has a regional cuisine of its own, with tarte flambée, choucroute, foie gras and kougelhopf, served in wood-panelled winstubs and paired with Alsace whites from vineyards just south of the city. It also has a serious fine-dining tier. Avoid the tourist menus around the cathedral.

Haarlem eats well but plainly. Terrace lunches on the Grote Markt, herring and kibbeling from the Saturday market and a good craft beer scene make pleasant meals rather than a reason to travel.

Both have well-kept historic centres that take about two days to see. Strasbourg has the grander set: the pink sandstone cathedral with its astronomical clock, Petite France's half-timbered houses by the locks, the UNESCO-listed Neustadt and a cluster of museums in the Palais Rohan.

Haarlem works on a more intimate scale. It has gabled canal houses, hidden hofje courtyards, Teylers' 18th-century oval room and the Frans Hals Museum, and it is more Golden Age town than cathedral city.

Neither is a late-night city, but Strasbourg has more going on. Its large student population fills the bars and beer cellars of Krutenau and Place Saint-Étienne, and the riverside terraces stay busy on summer evenings. Haarlem's evenings are slower, spent in brown cafés around the Grote Markt and the Botermarkt. For clubbing, Haarlem has the easy escape, since Amsterdam is a quarter of an hour away by train.

The two are broadly level, but the landscapes differ. Haarlem's outdoors is flat and coastal: the dunes, pinewoods and grazing ponies of Zuid-Kennemerland start at the edge of town, and the bulb fields turn the polders into stripes of colour in spring.

Strasbourg's own surroundings are level too, but within an hour there are real hills. The Vosges have castle ruins and ridge walks, and the Black Forest offers more serious hiking, though a car helps.

Both are excellent bases, and Haarlem has the slight edge in convenience. Amsterdam, Leiden, The Hague and Delft are all within an hour on a dense rail network, so you can go almost on impulse.

Strasbourg's trips spread across two countries: Colmar and the Alsace wine villages to the south, and Baden-Baden, Freiburg and Heidelberg across the Rhine. The wine route is much easier with a car or a bike.

Both centres are flat, compact and relaxed with children. Strasbourg has more built for them: the hands-on Le Vaisseau science centre, boat trips, rowing on the Orangerie lake and Europa-Park about an hour away.

Haarlem offers fossils at Teylers and room to run in the dunes and on the beach. For a zoo or science museum, families take the train to Amsterdam.

Both are easy without a car, and each centre can be crossed on foot in about twenty minutes. The difference is in how you travel further. Strasbourg has a tram network running out to the European quarter and over the Rhine to Kehl. In Haarlem the bike does most of the work, with separate paths out to the dunes and the sea, and fast trains for anything beyond.

Haarlem is slightly the better browse. The lanes south and west of the Grote Markt, such as Gierstraat and Kleine Houtstraat, are full of independent boutiques, design shops and bookshops.

Strasbourg is more about things to take home: Alsace wine, Soufflenheim pottery, printed linens and gingerbread. Its chain stores and department store sit around Place Kléber, and December's Christmas market is its crafts season.

Strasbourg is the cheaper stay, and much of the difference comes down to beds. Haarlem's appeal as a quieter base beside Amsterdam keeps its rooms in short supply from tulip season right through summer, so a compact room at a high rate is simply the norm. Strasbourg's hotels come under pressure only in a few predictable bursts, and outside those a sensible room is much easier to find.

The daily spend points the same way. Eating out in Haarlem costs Dutch prices, and saving means lunch from the market or a bakery, while a winstub dinner with a pichet of Alsace white is fair value in a way Haarlem's restaurants rarely are. Strasbourg's cathedral and old town lanes are free to wander and the tram is cheap, whereas a Haarlem stay built around outings to Amsterdam and Leiden means paying train fares and museum tickets day after day.

Strasbourg has the fuller calendar. It has a national opera company on Place Broglie, a full philharmonic season, one of France's leading theatres and the Musica contemporary music festival each autumn.

Haarlem has the Philharmonie and a theatre mostly playing in Dutch, and its speciality is the organ. Concerts on St Bavo's great instrument and the long-running international organ festival are its own draw.

Strasbourg has the better case here. The tiled Bains municipaux is a working historic bathhouse with a hammam, and Baden-Baden's Friedrichsbad and Caracalla thermal baths are less than an hour away.

Haarlem has no thermal or bathhouse tradition. It offers quiet canals, small saunas and larger Dutch sauna complexes in the region, and most visitors unwind by cycling in the dunes.