Lake Garda or Swiss Alps?

Lake Garda is a real summer swimming destination. The water is warm in July and August, and the south and east shores have long grassy lidos, pebble coves and the rock shelves below Sirmione, so a lake vacation can be built around swimming. Expect jetties and shingle rather than sand.

In the Swiss Alps, swimming is a pleasant extra. Lake Thun, Lake Brienz and the central lakes are very clean but stay cool. Mountain lakes such as the Caumasee are beautiful places for a dip. Only Ticino's lakes come close to Garda's warmth, and they have a shorter season.

Lake Garda offers more variety. It has lake fish with risotto, bigoli, its own olive oil, and wines that cover Bardolino, Chiaretto, Lugana and Amarone from the nearby hills, all close together. The best meals are in hill agriturismi rather than on the harbour fronts.

The Swiss Alps focus on cheese and cured meat: fondue, raclette, rösti and Graubünden air-dried beef, best eaten on a hut terrace. The terraced vineyards of Valais are a real find, and the smart resorts offer expensive fine dining. Outside those resorts, most villages offer little more than a few hotel dining rooms and stuben.

Neither destination is a museum trip, and the two are much alike for sightseeing. The difference is in kind. Lake Garda's sights are lakeside towns and a few standout places: Sirmione's moated castle and Roman villa ruins, d'Annunzio's eccentric Vittoriale estate, and castles above Malcesine and Riva.

The Swiss Alps' heritage lies along the valleys rather than in the towns: sgraffito houses in the Engadine, the World Heritage Albula and Bernina railway lines, the twin castles of Sion and Müstair's Carolingian frescoes. On both, sightseeing fills half-days rather than whole trips.

The Swiss Alps have the stronger nightlife, but only in winter. Après-ski in Verbier and Zermatt fills slope-side terraces and bars, and a few clubs stay open well past midnight. St Moritz and Gstaad offer a glossier night out in hotel bars.

Lake Garda's evenings are about aperitivo, dinner and a walk along the promenade, with Desenzano's lakefront bars and nearby summer clubs as the exception. Outside their peak seasons, both go quiet early.

Lake Garda's narrow northern end is a serious outdoor base. The cable car from Malcesine climbs Monte Baldo for ridge walks and paragliding, Arco's limestone walls draw climbers all year, and the steady afternoon wind makes Torbole a classic for windsurfing and kitesurfing. The southern basin of vineyards and moraine hills is much gentler country.

The Swiss Alps are on a far larger scale. The Eiger and Jungfrau above the Lauterbrunnen valley, the Matterhorn, the Aletsch glacier and the ibex of the Swiss National Park are high, glaciated country that Garda's mountains never reach, and thousands of kilometres of trails start straight from the lifts. In winter, Monte Baldo's small ski area is modest next to the big ski areas of Zermatt, Verbier, St Moritz and Davos.

Lake Garda has the stronger list of day trips, because the railway at Peschiera and Desenzano puts some of Italy's great cities close by. Verona's arena is under an hour away, Venice about an hour and a half, and Padua, Vicenza, Mantua and Bergamo are all easy days out.

The Swiss Alps offer pleasant rather than famous outings. Bern's arcades and Lucerne's wooden bridges are an easy train ride from the Bernese Oberland, and Gruyères, the Lavaux terraces and Chillon lie to the west. The trains make each of them simple.

Lake Garda's south-east shore is set up for children. Gardaland and its aquarium, water parks, the Parco Natura Viva safari park and large camping villages with pools sit beside shallow pebble shores. The main drawbacks are summer heat and traffic.

The Swiss Alps work well with children in a quieter way. Ski schools in Wengen, Grindelwald and Saas-Fee, summer toboggan runs and cogwheel trains keep them busy, and car-free villages let them roam safely. There is no big theme park or zoo, and altitude needs some care with toddlers.

The Swiss Alps are much easier to get around without a car. Trains, postbuses, lake steamers and cable cars run on connected timetables to almost every village, and resorts like Zermatt and Wengen ban cars altogether. Long transfers between regions are the only real slog.

At Lake Garda, the towns are walkable and ferries link them, but the railway serves only the south. Many visitors drive, and they face narrow, congested shore roads and scarce parking in summer.

Neither is a shopping destination, but the Swiss Alps have a little more. St Moritz and Gstaad have streets of luxury fashion and jewellery, and Zermatt and Interlaken have watch shops and serious mountain gear.

Lake Garda's shopping is the weekly market on the lakefronts of Desenzano, Lazise and Bardolino, plus olive oil, Lugana wine and Limone's lemon products to take home. On both, real retail means a trip to a city.

Lake Garda costs far less. Lakefront hotels in Sirmione or Limone are expensive in high summer, but campsites, hill agriturismi and the Valtenesi villages bring costs down, and spring and autumn are cheaper.

In the Swiss Alps the same kind of trip costs a great deal more, and even the cheaper options, such as hostels around Interlaken or an apartment in Goms or on the Ticino side, are still well above Garda's campsites. Lunch at a mountain restaurant is expensive, and a few days of cable cars and mountain railways can rival the hotel bill. Picnics and travel passes help, but the gap with Garda never closes.

Both come alive only in summer, but the Swiss Alps have slightly more of their own. The Verbier Festival and the Menuhin Festival around Gstaad bring top soloists and orchestras to resort halls and village churches for weeks at a time.

Lake Garda's own offer is concerts at the Vittoriale's open-air amphitheatre and band evenings in the town squares. Its trump card is close by, though: the opera season in Verona's Roman arena, under an hour from the southern shore.

Lake Garda has one strong anchor: Sirmione's sulphurous springs feed thermal pools overlooking the lake, and there are open-air thermal pools in a historic villa park near Lazise. The resort hotel spas at Gardone and Salò add to them, but the southern towns get crowded in August.

The Swiss Alps offer a deeper tradition and more calm. Leukerbad is a whole village of hot pools under the cliffs, Vals has its stone bath and Bad Ragaz and Scuol have centuries of bathing behind them. The clean air and car-free quiet do the rest.