Hurghada or Luxor?

Hurghada is built around its shore. It has some 40km of Red Sea coast and warm, clear water in every season, and the finest sand is out on the Giftun islands or in the quieter bays towards Makadi and Sahl Hasheesh. In town, the beach is whatever your hotel owns, often a jetty out over the reef flats.

Luxor has nothing to compare. The Nile is not for swimming, so the hotel pool is the only water. The coast is a separate journey of about four hours, and Hurghada itself is the obvious place to add a few beach days.

Neither city is worth travelling to for the food, and in both the hotel buffet does most of the work. The difference is in the best meal you can find outside it. In Hurghada that means fish chosen from the ice at the fishing harbour, or koshary and taameya in El Dahar.

In Luxor it is grilled pigeon, molokhia and oven-fresh bread, and above all home cooking in a family-run West Bank guesthouse. Hurghada's marina makes it easier to have a drink with dinner.

The gap here is as wide as it gets. Luxor stands on ancient Thebes. On the East Bank are Karnak's Great Hypostyle Hall and Luxor Temple, floodlit after dark. Across the river are the Valley of the Kings, Deir el-Bahari and Medinet Habu, enough for several full days.

Hurghada was a fishing village before the resorts came. Its sights are the Hurghada Museum, the El Mina mosque, the Coptic cathedral and a walk through El Dahar's market streets. Its best cultural outing is the long road to Luxor.

If you want a night out, Hurghada at least has one. Bars, shisha lounges and large beach clubs along Sheraton Road and the marina stay busy into the small hours at weekends and in summer, even though the scene is made for visitors rather than locals.

Luxor goes to bed early. A drink means a hotel bar or a rooftop terrace. The local evening is tea and shisha in street cafés or a stroll along the corniche, and most visitors are saving themselves for a dawn start at the tombs.

Hurghada's nature is mostly underwater. Reefs start just offshore, with turtles and dolphins around the Giftun islands and well-known wrecks and walls for divers. A steady north wind makes El Gouna and Soma Bay strong spots for kitesurfing. Inland, the bare Red Sea mountains are reached by quad bike or jeep.

Luxor's outdoors is gentler and smaller in scale. You can sail a felucca at sunset, watch herons and kingfishers on the river islands, cycle through West Bank fields, or take the path over the Theban hills to Deir el-Bahari. In both places, the summer heat limits outdoor time to the early morning.

From Luxor, the excursions are more great temples a short drive away. Dendera's painted ceilings are about an hour north, Esna's coloured reliefs an hour south, and Edfu, the most complete Ptolemaic temple in Egypt, is under two hours away. The catch is sameness: every outing is another monument.

Hurghada has little nearby beyond a stroll around El Gouna's lagoons and the Roman quarries in the desert. Its headline trip is Luxor itself, about four hours each way and better done with a night there.

Hurghada is the easier place with children because the resorts are designed for them. They have water slides, kids' clubs and shallow, sheltered beaches, some have full water parks, and beyond the hotel there are glass-bottom boats, semi-submarine trips over the reef and a large aquarium.

Luxor suits older children who are already hooked on mummies, and they will remember crawling into painted tombs and a dawn balloon flight. Nothing there is made for little ones, and the sites mean long walks over hot, shadeless ground. In both places, winter is far kinder with children.

Luxor is the easier of the two to get around on your own. On the East Bank, Luxor Temple, the museum and the corniche are within walking distance, Karnak is a short calèche or taxi ride away, and the public ferry across the Nile is simple to use. Only the spread-out West Bank calls for a driver for the day.

Hurghada stretches for tens of kilometres along one coast road with few pavements. Beyond the marina and parts of Sakkala, you depend on taxis, shared white minibuses and hotel shuttles. In both places, agree the fare before you get in.

Both are souvenir towns with much the same stock of spices, papyrus, alabaster and galabeyas, and the sellers are pushy in both. The malls on Hurghada's main road add everyday brands and supermarkets, which is useful if you are self-catering. Luxor's one distinctive stop is the alabaster workshops on the West Bank, where you can watch the stone being carved by hand.

Both are cheap by international standards, but Luxor is the cheaper place to stay and eat. That holds from simple guesthouses up to the grand riverside hotels, and the river ferry costs next to nothing. Most of a Luxor budget goes on entry fees, which are charged at every temple and tomb and add up over several days.

In Hurghada, all-inclusive packages and inexpensive diving and boat trips keep costs down. The extra costs there are imported alcohol, the marina restaurants and excursions bought through the hotel.

Neither city has a stage worth travelling for. Both offer the same tourist entertainment of belly dancing and tanoura whirling, staged for hotel guests. Luxor's one regular extra is the sound-and-light show, where you walk through Karnak under floodlights. In Hurghada, the shows come with desert-camp dinners and hotel animation programmes.

Hurghada is the better place to do nothing at all. There is a sunbed, a pool, and resort spas with hammams, steam rooms and inexpensive massages, some offering Red Sea salt rituals, although quality varies a great deal from hotel to hotel.

In Luxor, relaxation comes from the rhythm of the day rather than from spas: early starts, a long afternoon by the pool and sunset on the river. The mud-brick guesthouses among the West Bank fields are the calmest base. A few riverside hotels have spas, but the traffic and touts of the East Bank make it hard to rest.