Interlaken or Maastricht?

Neither is a beach destination, but Interlaken at least has real lake swimming in July and August. There are grassy lidos and small shingle beaches on Lake Thun at Neuhaus and towards Spiez, and colder turquoise water at Bönigen on Lake Brienz, all with snow peaks behind. Maastricht has only the old gravel-pit lakes along the Maas, with small sandy shores and lifeguarded areas, which are fine for a hot afternoon and nothing more.

Maastricht is the place to eat well. Limburg cooking gives it zuurvlees with fries and vlaai in every bakery, Belgian beer is poured in every brown café, and the old centre and Wyck have more fine dining than you would expect in a city this size, even if the international range is thin.

Interlaken feeds you reliably rather than memorably, with fondue, rösti and raclette in town and a run of Indian and Asian places. Its best meals are up the mountain, on a hut terrace above Grindelwald or with cheese from an Alpine dairy, and many visitors simply picnic.

On culture the two are far apart. Maastricht is one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands, with two Romanesque basilicas, the Helpoort and the medieval walls along the Jeker, a bridge that has crossed the Maas since the 13th century, the guided tunnels of the Sint-Pietersberg and the Bonnefanten's old masters and contemporary art.

Interlaken grew up as a base for the mountains and has almost nothing of its own beyond the hotel fronts on the Höheweg, the Kursaal and a few timber houses in Unterseen. For history and museums you take the train out, to Bern above all.

Maastricht has the livelier evenings. They centre on the brown cafés around the Markt, the Platielstraat and the Vrijthof, which students keep busy late at weekends during term, though people who want to go clubbing cross the border. Carnival, when the city parties in the streets for days, has no equivalent anywhere in the Bernese Oberland.

In Interlaken people go to bed early before trains and hikes. A night out there means a few backpacker pubs and basement clubs, the Kursaal casino or a quiet drink on the Höheweg.

Nature is the whole reason for Interlaken. The Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, the waterfalls of the Lauterbrunnen valley and the meltwater roaring inside the rock at Trümmelbach are all within an hour by rail. A longer ride up the cog railway brings you to the Jungfraujoch at 3,454m, looking over the Aletsch glacier. The town is also a centre for paragliding, canyoning and rafting, and for skiing in winter.

Maastricht is unusually hilly for the Netherlands, with the marl cliffs of the Sint-Pietersberg at the edge of the city, the green Jeker valley and the sunken lanes and orchards of the Heuvelland. This is pastoral country for walking and road cycling, pleasant but on a far smaller scale than the Alps.

Both make fine bases, but for different kinds of outing. From Interlaken, trips combine mountains with Swiss towns: Bern's arcaded old town in under an hour, Thun and its castle, steamers to Spiez and Oberhofen, the woodcarvers of Brienz and the open-air museum at Ballenberg, with Lucerne two scenic hours away.

Maastricht's strength is crossing borders. Aachen and Liège are each about half an hour away, Tongeren and Valkenburg are closer still, and Cologne, Brussels and Leuven fit into a longer day, so you can change country and language between breakfast and dinner.

Interlaken is the easier choice with children, because the excursions themselves are the fun: rack railways, gondolas, lake steamers, playgrounds at the summit stations and summer toboggan runs, plus the St Beatus caves and the farm animals at Ballenberg. Its weak points are wet days and high altitudes.

Maastricht is safe, flat and easy with a buggy, but inside the city there is little for children beyond the tunnel tour of the Sint-Pietersberg. The family attractions, Valkenburg's caves and fairy-tale park and the zoo at Kerkrade, are outside town, and the eating and strolling appeal mostly to adults.

Both are easy without a car, in different ways. Interlaken itself is small, and its strength is the connected network of mainline trains, narrow-gauge lines, cog railways, gondolas and steamers that covers the whole Jungfrau region. The cost is crowded mountain trains in summer.

Maastricht moves at walking and cycling pace. Its flat, largely pedestrianised centre spreads across both banks of the Maas, riverside bike paths make cycling easy, and the station in Wyck has trains to Liège and Aachen. The hill villages are harder to reach, since regional buses are slow compared with a car or bike.

Maastricht is a real shopping town that draws Dutch, Belgian and German visitors for the weekend. Boutiques fill the old houses of the Stokstraat quarter, the main brands are on the Grote Staat, Wyck has independent shops for interiors and vintage, and a weekly market fills the Markt.

Interlaken's Höheweg sells watches, jewellery, army knives, cuckoo clocks and chocolate to tour groups, along with outdoor gear for anyone who arrived without it. Woodcarving from Brienz is the one thing worth taking home.

Neither is cheap, but Maastricht is much kinder to the budget. Its prices are Northern European rather than Swiss, getting around the walkable centre costs nothing, and bakery lunches, beer in a brown café and midweek rooms keep the bill down.

In Interlaken everything is priced at full Swiss levels, and the mountain railways and cable cars a stay depends on, the Jungfraujoch above all, add a lot on top of hotels and meals. Hostels, picnics and regional passes help, but only so far.

Maastricht has a proper programme, if a provincial one. The theatre on the Vrijthof hosts the symphony orchestra, opera, drama and dance, and there are conservatory recitals, organ concerts in the churches, jazz cafés and large open-air concerts on the square in summer.

Interlaken's best-known performance is the amateur open-air William Tell, staged in the woods each summer, alongside folklore evenings of yodelling and alphorns and the occasional concert at the Kursaal. For an orchestra or a full theatre, go to Bern.

Maastricht has better access to real bathing. There are thermal pools above Valkenburg about twenty minutes away, baths in Aachen, which has been a spa town since Roman times, and the town of Spa within an hour. Back in the city, slow lunches and riverside walks make for an unhurried stay.

Interlaken has no thermal waters and relies on the spas of the grand hotels on the Höheweg and a public wellness area. Its restful moments come from the scenery: early mornings on the lakeshore, steamer crossings and quiet nights in Wengen or Mürren. The town centre itself is too busy to unwind in.