Heidelberg or Strasbourg?

Neither city is a place to swim in the sea. Each has only freshwater gravel-pit lakes for hot days. In Heidelberg they are scattered across the Rhine plain about half an hour out, and the town's outdoor pools are the closer option. Strasbourg's lakes are a little easier to get to: the Baggersee is on the tram line, and several lakes have lifeguards in July and August.

Both cities serve hearty Rhineland cooking with good white wine, but Strasbourg is clearly the better place to eat. Alsace gives it choucroute, baeckeoffe, foie gras and the winstub as a ready-made setting for a long meal, and it has a real fine-dining tier in the city and the nearby villages. Its covered market, cheese and charcuterie make it a place worth eating your way through.

Heidelberg's strength is wine more than cooking. Bergstrasse and Palatinate Rieslings, white asparagus in spring and Schäufele make good meals, but the best ones are in Neuenheim, the side streets and the village taverns, not on the Hauptstrasse. In both towns the tourist streets right beside the main sights are the places to avoid.

Heidelberg's appeal is one famous view: the red castle ruin above a baroque old town, with the oldest university in Germany and its graffiti-covered Student Prison adding character. It is photogenic and compact, but once you have seen the castle, the Old University and the Kurpfälzisches Museum, you have seen most of it.

Strasbourg has more, and on a grander scale. Its cathedral is one of the great Gothic buildings of Europe. Petite France and the German-built Neustadt show two different faces of the city, and the Palais Rohan, the Oeuvre Notre-Dame and the modern art museum give it a museum life Heidelberg cannot match. The European institutions add a present-day political side as well.

Evenings are much alike in both cities, shaped by students and quiet by midnight on weeknights. Heidelberg's going out is concentrated in the Untere Strasse, where small pubs and old fraternity taverns fill up in term time. Strasbourg's is spread across the Krutenau and Place Saint-Étienne, and in summer the riverside terraces make it more of an outdoor evening. In both, a proper club night means going somewhere else.

The two cities are about equal for the outdoors, but in different ways. In Heidelberg the woods start at the edge of the old town. The Philosophers' Walk, the Königstuhl and the Celtic ramparts on the Heiligenberg can all be reached on foot or by funicular, with no transport needed.

Strasbourg is flat, so its own green space is parkland and Rhine riverside forest, best explored by bike. The bigger outdoors lies about an hour away on either side: the Vosges with their castle ruins and Mont Sainte-Odile, and the higher ridges of the Black Forest. Both are easiest to reach by car.

Both cities are excellent bases, and each appears on the other's list of outings, though as a long day out. From Heidelberg the trips are about imperial and monastic history: Speyer's Romanesque cathedral, Worms, Lorsch and Maulbronn, the castles along the Neckar, and the Palatinate Wine Route. The shared regional fare system makes most of them easy without a car.

Strasbourg's trips centre on Alsace: Colmar and the Isenheim Altarpiece, the wine villages of Riquewihr and Eguisheim, and Haut-Koenigsbourg on its ridge. Across the Rhine are Baden-Baden and Freiburg, with Basel further south. Trains cover the cities, but the wine villages are much easier with a car or a bike.

Both cities are easy with children, and each has a large theme park within about an hour. Heidelberg's best family outings involve the hill: the funicular up to the Königstuhl and its small fairy-tale park, plus the zoo and the climb-aboard aircraft of the Technik Museum Speyer. The cobbled, sloping Altstadt is hard work with a pushchair.

Strasbourg's flat, mostly car-free centre is gentler on small legs and wheels. Canal boat trips, the storks and rowing boats in the Orangerie, and the Le Vaisseau science centre fill the days, and Europa-Park is the big outing.

Strasbourg is the easier city to get around. Its old town island takes about twenty minutes to cross on foot, trams link it directly to the station and the outskirts, one line even runs into Germany, and separated cycle lanes make a bike the quickest way about.

Heidelberg works well enough, but its station is some way west of the long, narrow Altstadt, so most visitors arrive by tram or bus. The streets around the castle are cobbled and steep. Where it does well is the regional network beyond the town, with one fare covering trips across the Rhine-Neckar area.

Strasbourg is the more rewarding place to shop, mostly for regional crafts and food: Soufflenheim pottery, printed linens, kougelhopf moulds, gingerbread and foie gras, plus delicatessens and independent shops in the lanes by the cathedral.

Heidelberg's shopping runs along a single long pedestrian street, with chains at one end and steins, cuckoo clocks and Studentenkuss chocolates at the other. A bottle of Bergstrasse wine is the most worthwhile thing to take home. Neither city has much in the way of fashion or luxury.

Costs are much the same in both cities, and in both hotels are the main expense. Heidelberg has a small stock of rooms, so many visitors stay in Mannheim and come in by train. In Strasbourg the thing to plan around is timing, because rooms get much more expensive during the Christmas market and the weeks when the European Parliament sits. Eating is reasonable in both, through student cafés in one and winstub plates with a pichet of wine in the other.

Strasbourg has the stronger arts life. The Opéra national du Rhin, the Théâtre National de Strasbourg and the Musica festival of contemporary music give it a national reputation, and jazz and experimental theatre broaden the programme.

Heidelberg does well for a town its size. Its municipal theatre and orchestra, the Heidelberger Frühling chamber festival and frequent church concerts give it a steady programme. The summer castle festival, with performances in the ruined courtyard, has no equivalent in Strasbourg, and Mannheim's larger opera house is about twenty minutes away by train.

Strasbourg has the edge for a relaxing stay. Its early twentieth-century Bains municipaux give it a tiled bathhouse with a hammam right in town, and the great baths of Baden-Baden are less than an hour away.

Heidelberg has no baths of its own beyond hotel spas, so a proper soak means a trip to the Kraichgau thermal complexes or a longer journey to Baden-Baden. For unwinding, it relies on evenings on the Neuenheim meadows and the forest paths above the Philosophers' Walk.