La Spezia or Salzburg?

La Spezia has no beach on its own waterfront, but salt water is never far away. Lerici and San Terenzo have sheltered sand and pebble, Portovenere and Palmaria have rocky platforms over very clear water, and Monterosso's long sandy beach is a short train ride up the coast. The sea stays warm enough from June into early October.

Salzburg's swimming is in the Salzkammergut lakes, half an hour or more away. Fuschlsee and Wolfgangsee are green and clean, and you get in from grass or a wooden jetty. The water is cooler, the season ends in early September, and a lake afternoon is a pleasant extra rather than a central part of the trip.

La Spezia eats better and has more local character. Wood-oven farinata, mesciua soup, rope-grown mussels from Portovenere and pesto on testaroli are all particular to this stretch of coast, and with them come Cinque Terre whites and sweet Sciacchetrà. Eating in town costs less than in the villages, although fine dining and food from abroad are both scarce.

Salzburg's cooking is hearty Austrian food: schnitzel, Kasnocken and the cloud-like Salzburger Nockerl. Its strengths are the coffee-house afternoons and the Augustiner monastery brewery's chestnut garden. In the old town, many restaurants serve the same expensive menus, so the better meals are in the inns of the outer districts.

Salzburg is the far richer city for sightseeing. The prince-archbishops' Baroque ensemble of cathedral, Residenz and arcaded squares sits under Hohensalzburg, Mozart's birthplace is a few lanes away, and St Peter's catacombs, Mirabell and Hellbrunn fill two or three full days without any repetition.

La Spezia is a nineteenth-century naval town of straight avenues and Liberty façades, with no medieval core. The Museo Amedeo Lia's early Italian paintings and the Lunigiana stele statues in Castello San Giorgio are worth a morning each. Most of the area's history, though, is out in Portovenere, Sarzana and Luni.

Neither city is somewhere to stay out late, and both are quiet by midnight. What differs is the kind of evening. La Spezia has the Italian aperitivo, with spritz and Vermentino on Via del Prione and the seafront, and in summer the crowd moves to Lerici's waterfront bars. Salzburg has beer halls with long tables and litre mugs, and student pubs along Rudolfskai. Anyone who wants a club night in Salzburg takes the train to Munich.

Both are excellent bases for the outdoors, and Salzburg offers the wider range. Wooded ridges rise inside the city, the Untersberg cable car takes you up to limestone ridge walks, and the Salzkammergut lakes, Berchtesgaden's Königssee and the ski areas are all close by. Snow in winter makes it a base for all seasons.

La Spezia's landscape is narrower but very striking. It has the vine-terraced cliffs and footpaths of the Cinque Terre, the island loop on Palmaria and the pines of Montemarcello, with kayaking and diving in the gulf and the marble peaks of the Apuan Alps an hour inland. Spring and autumn are the seasons to walk here.

La Spezia has the edge mainly because its day trips are so close and so easy without a car. The Cinque Terre villages are minutes away by train, Portovenere is a short boat ride, and Sarzana, Luni, Carrara, Pisa and Lucca are all within about an hour. Portofino and Genoa make a longer day along the Riviera.

Salzburg's day trips are just as varied: Hallstatt's lakeshore, salt mines at Hallein and Berchtesgaden, the fortress at Werfen and the city of Munich. The trips take longer, though, and several of the lake villages are much easier to reach with a hire car than by the slow buses.

Salzburg gives children more to do. The trick fountains at Hellbrunn, the zoo beside the palace, the Haus der Natur, the marionette theatre and the funicular up to the fortress fill the days, and the salt mines nearby add underground slides and boat rides. The cobbles and steep lanes are hard work with a pushchair, however.

La Spezia's flat centre is easier with a buggy, and the shallow water at San Terenzo and boat trips round the islands are good days out. Beyond the naval museum there are no dedicated attractions, and the steep villages and full summer trains suit older children best.

Both are easy without a car, but in different ways. La Spezia is above all a rail hub: from its flat, walkable centre, trains run through the Cinque Terre and on to Pisa, with buses and seasonal ferries around the gulf. Its weak point is the crowded coastal trains in summer.

Salzburg is best within the city. Its sights are all a short walk apart, trolleybuses reach Hellbrunn and the cable car, and the riverside paths are good for cycling. Getting out to the lakes is the slow part, which is why many visitors hire a car for those days.

Salzburg has more to shop for, and much of it is local. Getreidegasse's guild signs hang over the old burgher houses, workshops make dirndls and loden jackets to measure, and in Advent the Christmas market on Domplatz is one of the best known in the region.

La Spezia's Via del Prione is ordinary provincial high-street shopping. The best things to take home are edible: pesto, olive oil, anchovies and Sciacchetrà from the Piazza Cavour market and the delis around it.

La Spezia is the cheaper stay. Farinata, trattorias and local trains are fair value, and rooms cost clearly less than in the Cinque Terre villages, although summer rooms, trail passes and bathing establishments add up over a stay.

Salzburg is expensive for a small city, especially near the old town and during the summer festival and the Advent markets. Staying across the river, eating in the outer inns and beer halls, and buying a city card help to keep costs down.

This is where the two differ most. In summer the Salzburg Festival fills the Felsenreitschule and the Festspielhaus with opera and orchestras of the first rank, and Jedermann is played in front of the cathedral. Mozart Week, the Easter Festival, the Landestheater and nightly chamber concerts keep music going through the rest of the year.

La Spezia has the Teatro Civico's season and a long-established summer jazz festival, with concerts in piazzas around the gulf. For opera you have to go to Genoa or Pisa.

Salzburg is better for a restful trip. The Paracelsus Bad's saunas look out over the Kapuzinerberg, Bad Reichenhall's brine spa is twenty minutes away, and the Gastein valley's thermal springs make a fine spa excursion. Quiet coffee-house afternoons add to the slow pace.

La Spezia has no bathing tradition. Its nearest thermal baths are the small ones at Equi Terme, an hour inland. What it offers instead is unhurried time: a long lunch in Tellaro and the quiet of Palmaria, at its best outside the busy summer months.