Interlaken or Lucerne?

Neither is a beach destination. In both, the swimming season is July and August, with the water at around 20-21°C. What differs is where you swim. Interlaken has two lakes with different characters: the warmer Lake Thun, with grassy lidos and shingle at Neuhaus, and the glacial turquoise Lake Brienz, which is colder but striking, with a bathing area at Bönigen.

In Lucerne, swimming is part of city life. People swim from the old wooden lake baths and the Lido near the centre, or from the lawns at Ufschötti, so a swim fits easily between sights. The shore there is lawns and jetties rather than shingle.

Neither is a place to travel to for food, but Lucerne gives you a little more. It has a dish of its own in Chügelipastete, lake perch and whitefish on the menus, guild-house taverns in the Old Town, terraces along the Reuss and a Saturday market.

Interlaken's restaurants stick to fondue, rösti and international standbys for the visitor crowd. Its better meals happen higher up, on hut terraces above Grindelwald or Mürren, or at picnics with cheese from a mountain dairy.

This is where the two differ most. Interlaken grew up as a base for the mountains. Its sights are a row of grand hotels and the Kursaal along the Höheweg, a few timber houses in Unterseen and a small local museum, and that is the whole list.

Lucerne has a well-kept medieval Old Town of frescoed squares, the Chapel Bridge and Water Tower, the climbable towers of the Musegg Wall and the Lion Monument. The Rosengart Collection, the Bourbaki Panorama and Wagner's villa at Tribschen add to that. It is no great museum city, but it fills a day or two in a way Interlaken cannot.

Both go quiet early, but Lucerne has a little more going on after dark. It has riverside wine bars, a few cocktail bars and small clubs in the Neustadt, and students keep weekends lively. At Fasnacht the whole Old Town is out in costume until dawn.

Interlaken's evenings follow its early starts. There are pubs and basement clubs around the hostels and the casino in the Kursaal, and the streets are quiet well before midnight.

Both are among the finest mountain bases in the Alps, and the difference is one of character. Interlaken faces the high, glaciated wall of the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, with the Jungfraujoch at 3,454m and the waterfalls of Lauterbrunnen close by. It also offers a huge range of adventure sport, from paragliding down to the Höhematte to canyoning and rafting.

Lucerne's mountains are lower, with Pilatus and Rigi rising straight from the lake and Titlis and its glacier about an hour away. Its strength is combining a steamer, a cogwheel train and a ridge walk in a single day. In both towns, low cloud can hide the peaks for days.

These two are evenly matched for day trips, and each is a scenic two-hour ride from the other over the Brünig Pass. From Interlaken the best outings are Bern in under an hour, Thun's castle above the Aare, the lakeside castles at Spiez and Oberhofen, and the open-air museum at Ballenberg near Brienz.

Lucerne reaches bigger cities. Zurich, Bern and Basel with its art museums are each about an hour or less away, and there is the monastery at Einsiedeln. A boat down the lake goes to the Rütli meadow, where the story of the Swiss Confederation begins.

Both are safe, easy places with children, and much of the fun is the trains and boats themselves. Interlaken has more variety. The summit stations above Grindelwald and on the Harder Kulm have playgrounds, cliff walks and toboggan runs, and the St Beatus caves and Ballenberg are reliable favourites. The highest trips are best avoided with very young children because of the altitude.

Lucerne has the biggest single attraction of the two, the Swiss Museum of Transport, which fills a day in any weather. It also has the mirror maze in the Glacier Garden. After that its list runs short, and the lakeside lawns have to do much of the work.

You can do either without a car, but Lucerne is the more convenient. Its station, boat piers and Old Town sit together on the lakefront, so most sights and most excursions start a short, flat walk away.

Interlaken is small and flat too, but it is strung out between two stations twenty minutes' walk apart. Its narrow-gauge and cog railways reach deep into the Jungfrau region, but the most popular mountain trains get crowded in summer.

Much of the shopping is the same in both towns: Swiss watches and jewellery sold to tour groups, with army knives, cuckoo clocks and chocolate alongside. In Interlaken that trade along the Höheweg is nearly all there is, apart from outdoor shops where you can replace forgotten kit before a hike. Carved wood from Brienz, the home of Swiss woodcarving, is the souvenir with a real local story behind it.

Lucerne has the same watch trade on Schwanenplatz and the lakefront, but it also has a few independent boutiques in the Old Town lanes and a Saturday market along the river selling produce and crafts. That makes it the better town for an afternoon's browsing, though neither is the place to shop for clothes or homeware.

There is nothing to choose between them on cost. Both charge full Swiss prices for rooms, meals and drinks, and in both the mountain railways and cable cars take a large share of the budget.

What differs is where the money goes. In Interlaken the Jungfraujoch and adventure sports cost the most, while in Lucerne central hotel rooms are dearest in summer and during the music festival. In both, a travel pass and supermarket picnics are the main ways to save.

For music, Lucerne is far ahead. Jean Nouvel's lakefront hall, famous for its acoustics, hosts the Lucerne Festival's leading orchestras in late summer and the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra all year, and the city theatre stages opera, drama and dance.

Interlaken has the open-air William Tell play, staged by local amateurs each summer, folklore evenings with yodelling and alphorns, and occasional concerts in the Kursaal. For anything more, you need to go to Bern's theatre or the lake stage at Thun.

Interlaken's centre is built for activity and busy with coach groups and backpackers. The rest it offers lies mostly outside the town: early mornings on the lakeshore, slow steamer crossings, the quiet of Wengen or Mürren, and the spas of the grand Höheweg hotels.

Lucerne is the calmer place to stay in itself. Evenings are quiet, the lakeside promenades suit slow walks and the old wooden lake baths are a simple summer pleasure, though the Old Town fills with tour groups in the middle of the day. Neither town has thermal springs, but the Botta mineral bath high on the Rigi gives Lucerne a place to soak with a mountain view.