Lima or Cusco?

Cusco has no beach of any kind. It sits high in the Andes, and its glacial lakes and rivers are far too cold to swim in.

Lima at least has the Pacific, though the shore below Miraflores and Barranco is grey pebble with steady surf, better for surfers than swimmers. Real sand means driving about an hour south to Punta Hermosa or San Bartolo. That makes a pleasant summer day out, but it isn't a reason to choose the city.

Lima is one of the reasons people go to Peru at all. Its cooking draws on the coast, the Andes and the Amazon, with Japanese, Chinese and African influences, so in one stay you can eat ceviche, tiradito, Nikkei, chifa and old criollo dishes. Surquillo market shows what goes into them, and the best tasting menus in town are famous across the Americas.

Cusco eats the way the highlands do: potatoes and maize in many varieties, trout, alpaca, cuy and slow-cooked dishes from the picanterías, with San Pedro market as the place to start. Its Novoandino restaurants are good, but the range is narrow, and the menus near the main square are aimed at tour groups.

In Cusco the city itself is the main sight. Whole streets run between mortarless Inca walls, Santo Domingo stands on the foundations of Qorikancha, and the zigzag ramparts of Sacsayhuamán are a climb above the rooftops. The cathedral's Cusco School paintings add the colonial layer.

Lima has the better museums. The Larco's pre-Columbian ceramics and gold and MALI's three thousand years of Peruvian art are stronger collections than anything in Cusco. Add the viceregal centre with its wooden balconies and the catacombs of San Francisco, and it is a rewarding city. It just doesn't have the sense of a whole Inca capital still standing that Cusco gives.

Lima is where the nights are. In Barranco, bars and clubs fill in old mansions from around midnight and keep going until dawn at weekends, and Miraflores adds a more polished crowd. People dress up and dance to salsa and cumbia more than to electronic music.

Cusco's nightlife is a small knot of backpacker bars and clubs just off the Plaza de Armas, with pub crawls and pisco sours, plus a few quieter bars in San Blas. Many visitors drink little anyway, because of the altitude and tours that leave before dawn.

Cusco opens onto some of the finest mountain country in South America. Below it lies the terraced Sacred Valley, with the Cordillera Urubamba above. From there you can reach Humantay lake, Rainbow Mountain at over 5,000m, the Inca Trail and the Ausangate circuit, and there are condors and vicuñas on the high puna.

Lima's outdoors faces the sea. It has the clifftop malecón for walking and cycling, paragliders over the parks, and the sea lions of the Palomino Islands. Beyond that is brown desert that turns green only in the winter fog, under grey skies for much of the year.

Cusco has an outstanding choice of day trips, almost all of them Inca or colonial. In the Sacred Valley there are Pisac's hilltop citadel, Ollantaytambo's lived-in street grid, Chinchero's weavers, and the terraces of Moray with the salt pans of Maras. Machu Picchu can be done as a very long day by road, train and bus. The only weakness is that the themes repeat.

Lima has Pachacamac's adobe temples at the city's edge, and the old port of Callao is closer still. After those, its best outings run out quickly. Caral, Paracas and the pisco country around Ica are three hours or more away, so they work better as overnight trips.

Neither city is built around children, but Lima is much easier. It is at sea level and has a zoo of Peruvian animals at Parque de las Leyendas, evening fountain shows, clifftop playgrounds and summer beaches for older children. Heavy traffic is the main drawback, so it helps to keep each day to one district.

Cusco's altitude is a real risk for small children, and the pavements are steep and narrow. The days are full of ruins and long transfers. Older children who like history do well, and llamas in the Sacred Valley help, but families with toddlers usually stay lower down in the valley.

Cusco's sights are packed into a small centre that you can explore on foot, though the climbs to San Blas and Sacsayhuamán are hard work while you adjust to the altitude. Cheap taxis cover the trip back uphill, and tours or drivers handle the valley.

Lima is spread out and slow. Miraflores and Barranco are pleasant to walk, but crossing the city means the Metropolitano bus to the centre or ride-hailing apps, and a short journey can take an hour at rush hour.

Both cities sell the same main thing, alpaca and baby alpaca knitwear, and both are thin on anything else. The difference is in where it comes from. Cusco is close to where the weaving is done, with naturally dyed pieces from cooperatives such as Chinchero's and the ceramic and silver workshops of San Blas, though the shops around the main square repeat the same factory-made stock.

Lima gathers crafts from every region in the markets on Avenida Petit Thouars. That is handy if the highlands aren't on your route. Barranco adds small shops selling work by Peruvian designers, and there are malls for international brands.

Day to day, both cities are cheap, with low-cost set lunches, taxis and simple places to stay. What differs is where the money goes. In Cusco, the train and entry for Machu Picchu and any guided trek take a large share of the budget, and they are hard to avoid.

In Lima, the big expense is optional. Eating where locals eat costs little, while a trip built around the famous tasting menus and the cocktail bars of Miraflores quickly becomes expensive.

Lima has more to offer in the evenings. Barranco's peñas, with música criolla and Afro-Peruvian rhythms on guitar and cajón, go on late with the audience dancing. The Gran Teatro Nacional and the Teatro Municipal stage symphony concerts, ballet and opera.

In Cusco it is mostly folkloric shows and panpipe bands over dinner. Its strength is the festivals: Inti Raymi at Sacsayhuamán around the June solstice, and the masked dancers of Corpus Christi and Qoyllur Rit'i.

Cusco is not a calm city in itself. The thin air tires you in the first days, the nights are cold and tours leave before dawn. Still, cheap massage is on offer in every street around the main square, and some hotel spas pump oxygen into the rooms to ease the altitude. Real rest means an outing: down to the riverside lodges of the Sacred Valley for yoga and quiet gardens, or further to the hot springs at Aguas Calientes or Lares.

Lima has less to offer. Here wellness comes down to hotel and day spas in Miraflores and San Isidro, with no thermal springs, and the calmest hour is an early walk or a yoga session in the clifftop parks above the Pacific. Traffic noise and grey winters make it a city for eating and sightseeing, not for unwinding.