Kaunas or Krakow?

Kaunas has the better summer swimming, though it is a lido and not a coast. Sandy bathing spots line the Kaunas Reservoir and the Nemunas at Panemune, small lakes such as Lampedziai sit on the edge of town, and the Baltic at Palanga can be done as a long day out.

Krakow has less to offer. The Zakrzowek quarry is beautiful, turquoise water under limestone cliffs, but you can only swim in its fenced bathing areas. The Vistula is for sitting beside, and the sea is too far for a day trip, so the indoor water park is the fallback.

The two cities eat in a similar way, all potatoes, rye and dumplings, but Krakow has more variety and more places to eat. Its milk bars serve cheap canteen lunches, obwarzanek bread is sold from street carts, Stary Kleparz is a proper produce market, and Plac Nowy keeps serving zapiekanki late into the night.

In Kaunas you eat cepelinai, pink cold beetroot soup in summer and smoked meats, and you drink mead and herbal bitters. It is satisfying, but you will have tried most of what the city does well within a few days.

Krakow is the richer city to explore. Its medieval core survived the war almost untouched, from the Cloth Hall and St Mary's Basilica to the royal tombs on Wawel Hill. Kazimierz and the Schindler Factory add the Jewish and wartime history.

Kaunas's appeal is narrower and less familiar. The interwar modernist centre from its years as provisional capital is the real draw, with functionalist offices, the Central Post Office and the white Christ's Resurrection Church with its rooftop view. The Ciurlionis museum and the Ninth Fort add depth, and the brick Old Town is pleasant but modest.

This is where the two differ most. In Krakow you can go out any night of the week: Old Town cellar bars run past midnight, and Kazimierz has shabby-chic bars and packed courtyards. Drinks are cheap enough that bar-hopping is the usual plan. The downside is stag and hen groups around the Main Square at weekends.

Kaunas has student cellar bars and a few clubs, but they really fill only on Friday and Saturday, and the crowd thins when the universities break for summer. Expect a long dinner and some mead, not a late night.

Krakow has more variety within reach. Ojcow's limestone pinnacles and caves are half an hour north, and the Tatras for real alpine hiking and the Pieniny for rafting the Dunajec are long but doable days. Closer in, the Kosciuszko Mound looks out towards the mountains.

The countryside around Kaunas is flat and gentle. The Azuolynas oak grove, the pine woods of the reservoir regional park and the Nemunas Loops are good for cycling, sailing or canoeing, but there are no hills to climb.

Krakow's day trips are among the most important in the region. The underground salt church at Wieliczka is half an hour away, and the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial is a full and sobering day. Zakopane and the wooden churches add a mountain side.

From Kaunas, the best outing is Vilnius and its baroque old town, about an hour by train. Trakai's island castle, the Rumsiskes open-air museum and the Hill of Crosses make a good list, but none has the weight of Krakow's two great sites.

Krakow gives children more to do. There is the fire-breathing dragon below Wawel and the Dragon's Den cave, street performers on the car-free square, an indoor water park open all year and Energylandia about an hour's drive away. Several major sights deal with dark history, so you need to plan around younger children.

Kaunas is calm and easy but has little built for families: a small zoo in the oak grove, two short funicular rides and the carved figures at the Devils' Museum. It works best as a short summer stop.

Both centres are best on foot. Krakow's is more compact and better connected: the Old Town, Wawel, Kazimierz and Podgorze are a short walk apart, trams cover the rest, and a train runs to the airport. Wieliczka and Auschwitz are easy by public transport.

In Kaunas, nearly everything lies along the long pedestrian Laisves aleja. The Ninth Fort, Pazaislis and the reservoir need a trolleybus or a cheap taxi. Both cities have cobbles that are slow going with wheeled luggage.

Neither city is a place to go for fashion, but Krakow is more fun to browse. The Cloth Hall has sold crafts since the Middle Ages, Boleslawiec's blue-patterned pottery is the classic thing to take home, and Kazimierz adds vintage shops and a weekend flea market on Plac Nowy.

Kaunas has amber too, along with Lithuanian linen, woven sashes and rye bread from market stalls. Beyond that it offers chain stores on Laisves aleja and malls on the edge of the centre.

Both are easy on the wallet, so the difference is in where the money goes. In Kaunas prices are low and even across the city, and rooms cost noticeably less than in Vilnius. Expect to pay more only for modern restaurants and imported drinks.

Krakow's beer, milk-bar lunches and trams are just as cheap, but rooms around the Main Square cost more, and summer weekends push prices up. Staying in Kazimierz or Podgorze and taking the train to day-trip sites instead of an organised tour keeps it cheap.

In Krakow, music is easier to find without planning. Chopin recitals fill Old Town churches and palaces most evenings, jazz cellars play through the week, and klezmer is common in Kazimierz, with the Jewish Culture Festival's open-air finale on Szeroka Street.

Kaunas has a smaller but solid season. Operetta and musicals at the State Musical Theatre, the philharmonic, a spring jazz festival and summer concerts at Pazaislis Monastery are the highlights. In both cities nearly all theatre is in the local language.

Both cities are fairly calm, but they relax in different ways. Kaunas has a real sauna culture in the wood-fired pirtis, with birch whisks and a cold plunge by the lakes, and the old spa town of Birstonas is about 40 minutes away for a proper spa stay.

Krakow has no bathing tradition of its own, so it relies on hotel spas and the water park's saunas, plus salt-air sessions deep in the Wieliczka mine. Its naturally hot thermal pools are about two hours south near Zakopane.