Innsbruck or Pula?

Pula wins this easily. The coast south of the centre, around Verudela, Stoja and Medulin, has clear sea from June to late September. You swim from rocks, platforms and pebble coves rather than sand, and Cape Kamenjak has the wildest swimming.

Innsbruck has only the shallow plateau lakes such as the Lanser See, plus the beautiful but cool Achensee. They make a fine afternoon in July or August but are nothing to plan a trip around.

Pula has the more interesting food. Istrian cooking means truffle pasta, scampi buzara, pršut and local olive oil and wine, and there is a market hall to browse, though the best meals are usually in country konobas rather than beside the Arena.

Innsbruck's cooking is narrower and heavier: Gröstl, dumplings and Kaiserschmarrn, at their best in a mountain hut after a walk. There is no market culture to speak of, and the town's real pleasure is its coffee houses with strudel.

Both have a day or two of first-rate sights, but from different eras. Innsbruck's are Habsburg: the Golden Roof, the Hofburg, Maximilian's tomb ringed by bronzes in the Hofkirche and the cabinet of curiosities at Ambras Castle, with solid museums for a wet afternoon.

Pula's sights are mainly Roman. The Arena, the Temple of Augustus and the Arch of the Sergii all stand in the open, with Venetian and Austro-Hungarian buildings around them. Here you spend your time walking among ruins rather than indoors in collections.

Neither city is worth choosing for nights out, but the evenings differ. Innsbruck's students keep the bars and small clubs in the railway viaduct arches busy late at weekends all year, and winter visitors head to après-ski in the resorts. Pula livens up only in summer, with terraces around the Forum and beach bars on Verudela and in Medulin, and most nights end early out of season.

Innsbruck is in a different league here. A funicular and the Nordkette cable cars take you from the old town to a ridge at about 2,300m in under half an hour, with the Karwendel behind it and the Stubai Glacier, ski areas, via ferratas and hut-to-hut routes all around.

Pula's outdoors are gentler and by the sea: walking and cycling on car-free Kamenjak, sea kayaking, windsurfing and wreck diving. For real hills you have to drive to Učka, and the summer heat limits what you can do at midday.

Both make good bases, but in different ways. From Innsbruck the train does the work: Hall in Tirol is ten minutes away, Munich and Salzburg take under two hours, and Bolzano and Merano are just over the Brenner Pass.

Pula's trips stay closer to home and mostly need a car. You can reach Rovinj, the mosaics of Poreč, the hill towns of Motovun and Hum with their truffles and wine, and the boat out to the Brijuni islands.

Both are safe and easy with children; the difference is the setting. In Innsbruck, families ride the funicular to the Alpenzoo's ibex and wolves, then try the adventure trails or the ski schools above town, though rainy days need planning.

In Pula, days are spent by the sea in the shallow bays of Medulin and Premantura, with the Verudela aquarium and the Arena's underground passages for a change. In high summer, the heat, the rocky shores and the reliance on a car make it more work.

Innsbruck is far easier without a car. The flat centre is walkable, trams and buses reach Igls and the Stubai valley, the funicular to the mountains starts at the old town and regional trains run along the valley.

Pula's centre is just as easy on foot, but beyond it the buses are infrequent and the inland railway is of little use. The coves, Kamenjak and the hill towns really need a car or a scooter.

Neither is a shopping destination, but Innsbruck offers a little more: high-street chains on Maria-Theresien-Strasse, loden and Tyrolean crafts under the old-town arcades, and excellent outdoor and ski shops. In Pula the best buys are things to eat and drink: olive oil, truffles, wine and rakija from the market hall or straight from producers inland.

Innsbruck is the dearer of the two, and its expensive months fall in winter, when ski season and the Christmas markets fill the hotels. A meal in a traditional inn is filling rather than cheap. On the other hand, trams, buses and regional trains are fairly priced and you can manage without a car, so getting around costs little.

Pula is cheaper over a whole trip, and noticeably cheaper than the better-known towns further down the Croatian coast. Its peak is midsummer, when rooms book up and the tables by the Arena and the harbour charge tourist prices. City buses and the Roman sights cost little, but most visitors need a hire car for the coast and the hill towns, and boat trips to the islands, so a good part of the saving goes on these.

Innsbruck has the fuller programme. Opera, operetta and dance run through the season at the Tiroler Landestheater, the Tyrolean Symphony Orchestra plays in the congress hall, and the summer Festival of Early Music uses settings such as the Spanish Hall at Ambras Castle.

Pula has one great stage, the Arena, where a summer concert or film festival screening under Roman arches is hard to beat. The rest of the year offers little beyond Croatian-language drama.

Innsbruck is the better place to unwind, in the Alpine way: hotel spas with mountain views in Igls, a sauna after a day outdoors, and the large thermal complexes of the Ötztal and Zillertal about an hour away. Pula has only the spas of resort hotels on Verudela and in Medulin. Its calm comes instead from pine-shaded coastal walks and long coffees on the Forum outside high summer.