Krakow or Vienna?

Krakow has almost no swimming. Its one setting is the flooded Zakrzowek quarry, with turquoise water and fenced bathing areas in summer. The Vistula is for sitting beside, so otherwise it is pools and the indoor water park.

Neither city is a beach destination, but Vienna does have a proper swimming summer. The Danube Island has about 20km of grassy and gravel banks, and the warmer Alte Donau has old lidos. Locals reach both by U-Bahn after work, and the shallow Neusiedler See is about an hour away.

Krakow eats generously and cheaply, built on Polish home cooking: pierogi with every filling, zurek served in a loaf of bread, canteen lunches in the old milk bars and late-night zapiekanki from the round market hall on Plac Nowy. Flavoured vodka and craft beer go well with all of it, but the cooking is filling rather than refined, and there are few fine-dining restaurants.

Vienna has more to offer at the table, with a cuisine of its own shaped by the empire. Schnitzel and Tafelspitz are served in wood-panelled Beisl taverns, and a pastry tradition of strudel and Sachertorte makes a coffee-house visit part of every day. The city grows its own wine, poured at the Heuriger of Grinzing and Nussdorf, and its fine dining is solid. Its weak spot is international and street food, where the choice is thinner than in other capitals of its size.

Krakow came through the Second World War largely intact and has one of the best-preserved medieval centres in Central Europe. The vast Main Market Square, the Veit Stoss altarpiece in St Mary's, Wawel's royal castle and coronation cathedral and the synagogues of Kazimierz all sit close together. Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine is its most famous painting, and two or three days cover the main sights well.

Vienna works on an imperial scale and needs longer. It has the Hofburg and Schönbrunn palaces, the Ringstrasse, and major museums such as the Kunsthistorisches with its Bruegels and the Belvedere with Klimt. The Jugendstil and Secession buildings add a second great period, and together they easily fill a week.

Krakow is the better city for going out. Its many students keep the brick-vaulted cellar bars of the Old Town busy past midnight, and the bars and courtyards around Plac Nowy in Kazimierz have real character. Drinks are cheap enough that bar-hopping is the usual plan. Stag groups fill parts of the Old Town at weekends.

Vienna's evenings are slower. People drink wine at a Heuriger, sit in wood-panelled bars, try the bars under the Gürtel arches or use the summer deckchair bars on the Danube Canal. The club scene is small. Its one distinctive draw is the winter ball season, when visitors can buy tickets to formal balls in palaces.

The two are evenly matched, but the countryside sits in different places. In Vienna it starts inside the city limits: trails climb through vineyards to the Kahlenberg, and the floodplain forest of the Donau-Auen can be explored by boat. Krakow's green space is gentler: the Planty, the Blonia meadow, the Kosciuszko Mound, and the limestone valley of Ojcow half an hour north.

For mountains, Krakow has the Tatras, with real alpine hiking, and rafting through the Dunajec gorge, each about two hours away. Vienna's answer is the Rax and Schneeberg, high limestone plateaus at the eastern edge of the Alps, one of them reached by rack railway.

Both cities have excellent day trips, but of very different kinds. Krakow's are serious ones: the salt chambers and underground church of Wieliczka, the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial that needs a full day, and pilgrimage sites such as Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, Wadowice and Jasna Gora.

Vienna's are lighter and more varied. Bratislava is reached by train or Danube boat, and the Wachau has vineyards, apricot orchards and the abbey at Melk. There is also the spa town of Baden, Haydn's palace at Eisenstadt, and Brno across the Czech border.

Krakow works well with children for a few days. There are the car-free square with its carriages and street performers, the fire-breathing dragon below Wawel, a zoo and a big water park, with Energylandia an hour's drive away. Cobbles are hard on pushchairs, though, and the wartime sights are not for younger children.

Vienna offers families more and makes it easier. Schönbrunn Zoo, the Prater's Ferris wheel and rides, a shark aquarium inside a flak tower, and dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum can fill a week. Playgrounds are never far away.

Krakow's Old Town, Wawel, Kazimierz and Podgorze are close enough that most visitors rarely need more than their feet and the odd tram. Without a metro, though, trams can crawl in traffic, and the cobbles slow anyone pulling luggage.

Vienna is easier to get around. Five U-Bahn lines, trams and buses all run on one ticket, and the U-Bahn runs through the night at weekends. Public transport reaches Schönbrunn, the Danube Island and even the vineyard villages, so a car is never needed.

Krakow's shopping is mostly good souvenirs: amber, lace and carved boxes in the medieval Cloth Hall, blue-patterned Boleslawiec pottery, and a few vintage and antique shops in Kazimierz. Beyond the high-street chains and the station mall there is little serious fashion.

Vienna does better for both fashion and crafts. Luxury houses line the Kohlmarkt and Graben, Mariahilfer Strasse covers everyday fashion, and Neubau has independent designers. Augarten porcelain, crystal and Loden coats make gifts made to a long tradition.

Krakow makes a budget go much further. Cheap beer, milk-bar lunches and trams keep daily spending low, and rooms are reasonable for most of the year. Prices rise mainly around the Main Square and on summer weekends.

Vienna costs Western European money. Hotels are dearest in the ball season and the Christmas market weeks, and the big palaces charge full admission. Good-value transport passes and free palace gardens help.

This is where the two differ most. Krakow has a respectable music life: the Philharmonic and the opera, nightly Chopin recitals in churches and palaces, jazz in brick cellars and klezmer in Kazimierz. Its strong theatre, though, is almost all in Polish.

Many visitors travel to Vienna for the music alone. The State Opera performs on most nights, with standing places anyone can afford, and the Vienna Philharmonic plays in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein. The Volksoper stages operetta, and the Vienna Boys' Choir sings Sunday Mass, in the city where Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert worked.

Krakow has little in the way of bathing: hotel spas, saunas at the water park and, more unusually, salt-air therapy deep in the Wieliczka mine. The hot springs of Podhale are two hours south. In town, rest mostly means the Planty and the riverbanks below Wawel.

In Vienna, slowing down is part of daily life, from coffee-house afternoons to evenings at the vineyard taverns. Thermal water is close at hand too: the warm-spring pools of Therme Wien, the Art Deco Amalienbad, and the sulphur baths of Baden half an hour away.