Hallstatt or Nuremberg?

Neither is a place for a swimming vacation, but Hallstatt at least has water on the doorstep. There is a bathing lawn and jetty at the north end of the village and a lido at Obertraun, good for a bracing dip in clear Alpine water in high summer.

In Nuremberg a swim means a city pool or an hour's trip to the Brombachsee and the other Franconian lakes. Their water is warmer and they have small sandy strips, but going there is an outing in its own right.

As a place to eat, Nuremberg is well ahead, because a whole regional cuisine is set against one good lakeside meal. Hallstatt has a few guesthouse dining rooms and terraces cooking Austrian standards, and the dish worth trying is char or whitefish from the lake, eaten once with the water in view. Kitchens can shut early after the day visitors leave, and for anything more you would go to the old patisseries of Bad Ischl.

Nuremberg has a regional kitchen to work through over several meals. Franconian cooking is hearty, pork-heavy and made to go with beer, and the city has its own sweet tradition in Lebkuchen, the spiced gingerbread baked here for centuries and sold all year. Away from the regional cooking, the restaurants are ordinary for a city of its size, but there is still far more to choose from at dinner than in Hallstatt.

Nuremberg has enough sightseeing for several days. There are the Kaiserburg and the medieval walls, the churches of St Sebaldus and St Lorenz, Dürer's house, and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, which could fill a day by itself. Then there is the twentieth century, at the Rally Grounds and in Courtroom 600.

Hallstatt's heritage is older and more concentrated. It has seven thousand years of salt mining, the burial ground that gave the Hallstatt culture its name, and the painted skulls of the Beinhaus. Still, the village, the salt mine and the small museum take a day at most.

Hallstatt has no nightlife. Once the tour groups leave, an evening means dinner, a glass of wine by the water and a walk in the dark. Nuremberg offers a relaxed night out built around bars: taverns and wine bars in the old town, students on the squares in summer, and small alternative bars in Gostenhof's old working-class streets, with a few clubs for weekends.

Hallstatt sits in some of the finest scenery in the Alps. A cable car climbs the Krippenstein to the Five Fingers platform and the Dachstein ice caves, the Echerntal leads past waterfalls towards the glacier, and the Gosausee is a classic Alpine view. Summer brings hut-to-hut hiking and via ferratas, and winter brings ski touring.

Nuremberg's outdoors is gentler. The Reichswald forest begins at the edge of the city, and about an hour away Franconian Switzerland has limestone towers, caves and good rock climbing. It is fine country for walkers and cyclists, but there are no high mountains.

Nuremberg is the better base for day trips, mainly because the trains do the work. Bamberg, Regensburg and Würzburg are each about an hour away, Rothenburg ob der Tauber and Dinkelsbühl a little further, and Munich is an hour by fast train.

Hallstatt has a lovely set of outings in the Salzkammergut: the Kaiservilla in Bad Ischl, St Wolfgang's altarpiece and Gmunden's lake castle, with Salzburg about an hour and a half away. Without a car, though, every trip takes planning around buses and the lakeside railway.

Nuremberg is the easier choice with children. It has centuries of toy-making behind its Toy Museum, a railway museum with full-size locomotives, a zoo in wooded old quarries with a dolphin and manatee house, and its own children's Christmas market in Advent.

Hallstatt has a few hits, especially the miners' slides and underground lake of the salt mine, and the ice caves for older children. The village itself is a steep single lane, crowded at midday and hard work with a pushchair.

On foot both are easy: Hallstatt is a few minutes from end to end, and Nuremberg's old town is about 1.5km across inside the walls. Beyond the centre they are very different. Nuremberg's U-Bahn, trams and S-Bahn run on one ticket out to the zoo, the Rally Grounds and Fürth, and regional trains reach the day-trip towns, so a car is unnecessary.

Hallstatt's station is on the far shore, reached by a small boat, and buses to Obertraun, Gosau and Bad Ischl are limited outside summer. Many visitors find a car worth having.

In Hallstatt, souvenirs are all there is to buy. A short stroll along the main lane passes carved wood, schnapps and dirndl accessories, and the one buy worth taking home is salt from the mine above the village, in grinders or bath mixes.

Shopping in Nuremberg has more character, though it is still not a reason to come. Lebkuchen comes in decorated tins, and wooden toys and tin figures are sold at the craft workshops of the Handwerkerhof by the station gate. In Advent the Christkindlesmarkt on the Hauptmarkt is among Germany's most famous. Out of season, Königstraße and Breite Gasse are mostly chain stores.

A bed in Hallstatt is expensive. The village has few rooms and draws visitors from all over the world, so lakeside guesthouses charge well above the Austrian average, and the salt mine, the funicular and the Dachstein cable car add up. Staying in Obertraun, Bad Goisern or Bad Ischl and coming in for the day keeps costs down.

A few days in Nuremberg ask much less of the budget. Tavern meals are filling, local beer and public transport cost little, and hotels are fairly priced except during the big trade fairs and the Advent market season.

Nuremberg has a full season to plan evenings around. The Staatstheater stages opera, ballet and drama in its Art Nouveau house, two orchestras play in the Meistersingerhalle, and in summer there are the open-air concert in the Luitpoldhain and the free Bardentreffen in the squares.

Hallstatt has a brass band on feast days and the odd church concert. For more, you would go to the operetta in Bad Ischl or Salzburg's classical season.

Both offer about as much rest, but of different kinds. In Hallstatt the calm comes from the place itself, especially the misty early mornings and the evenings after the crowds leave. The salt-brine baths of Bad Ischl and Bad Aussee are a short drive away.

In Nuremberg the rest is more organised. A large thermal spa with sauna gardens in Fürth is a U-Bahn ride away, though visitors should expect the nude, mixed saunas common in Germany. The saline pools of Bad Windsheim are about an hour away, and slow afternoons in a beer garden are the local way to unwind.