Kalambaka or Sofia?

Neither place works for a beach vacation, and the swimming they offer is quite different. In Kalambaka it means the hotel pool or a cold dip in a Pindos river on a hot day, and the nearest sea beaches are well over two hours away by car.

Sofia is even further from the sea. The Black Sea is a full day's drive or a domestic flight away, so locals swim in the outdoor pools in the parks or in the lake at Pancharevo.

Both serve hearty, meaty mountain cooking, but Sofia gives you more choice. Besides kebapche, shopska salad and clay-pot dishes in the mehanas, it has small modern bistros around Vitosha Boulevard and wine bars pouring Mavrud and Melnik.

Kalambaka's tavernas in town and in Kastraki serve grilled lamb, bean soups and pies, and the menu changes little from one door to the next. What sets it apart is the setting. Dinner with the Meteora pillars turning gold at sunset is something no restaurant in Sofia can offer.

Both have a strong cultural offer, but of quite different kinds. Kalambaka is really about one sight: the six working Meteora monasteries, such as the Great Meteoron, Varlaam and Roussanou. You reach their frescoed churches and icon collections by rock-cut steps, and outside them the town itself is modern and plain.

Sofia spreads its history across a compact centre. Roman Serdica lies around the metro, near the Rotunda of St George and the Banya Bashi Mosque, with the gold domes of Alexander Nevsky to the east. Its museums go further, from Thracian gold to socialist statues, and the UNESCO-listed frescoes at Boyana Church are the city's finest single sight.

This is where the two differ most. In Kalambaka the evening is a long dinner and maybe a drink at a café-bar on the square, and for anything livelier you drive half an hour to Trikala.

Sofia has a proper night out. Cocktail bars, craft beer pubs and wine bars fill the streets around Shishman, students crowd the cellar bars under the old buildings, and there are a few electronic clubs and summer terraces in the parks.

In Kalambaka you can walk from your hotel straight up among the rock pillars, some around 400m high. Monks' paths climb through oak woods to the clifftops, the conglomerate is a well-known climbing area, and to the west lie the Pindos fir forests and the Aspropotamos valley, with rafting.

Sofia's outdoors is a whole mountain over 2,200m high, reached by city bus and gondola. You can walk Vitosha's boulder rivers and climb to the summit of Cherni Vrah, and the Seven Rila Lakes and proper skiing at Borovets are within reach. Near Kalambaka, the only winter skiing is on the small slopes at Metsovo.

Both have good day trips, and both lead to monasteries. From Sofia the big trip is Rila Monastery, about two hours away, and Plovdiv's Roman theatre and painted houses can be reached by train as well as by road.

From Kalambaka the trips head into the mountains and need a car: easygoing Trikala, the stone village of Metsovo with its smoked cheeses, and Ioannina on its lake, with the Zagori villages at the outer limit.

Sofia is a bit easier with children. It has big parks with playgrounds, a hands-on science centre, a mineral museum and the gondola up Vitosha, although broken pavements make pushchairs hard work.

Kalambaka is safe and small, and older children may love the trails or a beginners' climbing session. But long flights of steps, hushed monastery interiors and dress rules test younger ones, so a night or two is usually enough.

Sofia is much easier without a car. The metro runs from the airport through the centre to the station and the foot of Vitosha, and trams and plentiful taxis cover the rest, though signs away from the centre are mostly in Cyrillic.

In Kalambaka the town takes a quarter of an hour to cross on foot, but the monasteries are spread along a winding road above it, and the bus up is infrequent. Unless you are happy to hike up for an hour, you will need a car, taxis or a tour.

Neither is worth a trip for shopping, but Sofia has more to fill an afternoon. Vitosha Boulevard has the chains, and you can find rose oil, embroidery, Troyan pottery and the icon flea market by Alexander Nevsky. Kalambaka has a single souvenir street of painted icons, local honey and tsipouro, plus the monasteries' own shops.

Both are good value, and Sofia is the cheaper of the two. Central hotels, meals and wine there cost little, and trips to Vitosha or Rila add hardly anything.

Kalambaka's guesthouses and tavernas are fairly priced, but hotels with views of the rocks, Orthodox Easter and the car or tours needed to reach the monasteries push the total up.

Sofia has a full season of performances. The National Opera and Ballet, the Philharmonic at Bulgaria Hall and the large National Palace of Culture all stage shows, and Bulgarian choral singing is its most distinctive sound.

Kalambaka has almost nothing of this kind beyond the odd summer festival or a taverna musician. The Byzantine chant at a monastery service is worship, not a performance.

Sofia has a real spa tradition and Kalambaka does not. Warm mineral water runs from public taps beside the old Central Mineral Baths, and you can go bathing on the city's edges or in Bankya, about half an hour away.

Kalambaka offers stillness instead: a town that goes to bed early and dawn light on the rocks. For treatments you have only a few hotel saunas and massage rooms.