Lucerne or Paris?

Neither city is on the coast, but Lucerne makes more of its water. In July and August people swim in the clean, calm lake from the Lido, the old wooden lake baths and the lawns at Ufschötti, with the mountains straight in front of them. The swimming is from grass and jetties, not sand, but it is real open-water bathing.

Paris has summer sand dressed along the Seine banks, swimming spots on the Bassin de la Villette and handsome Art Deco pools. These are for cooling off in the city. For an actual swim outdoors, Lucerne is better, and for the sea you would have to go to Normandy.

Food is one of the biggest gaps between the two. Lucerne serves good, hearty Swiss cooking: Chügelipastete, fondue, rösti and lake perch in panelled Old Town taverns. Once you have tried those, the choice is limited, and the places by the Chapel Bridge feed coach groups.

In Paris, eating well is part of every day of the trip. You can go from zinc-counter bistros to haute cuisine, natural wine bars and the small neo-bistros in the east of the city, then add couscous in Belleville and pho in the 13th. Then there are the boulangeries, cheese shops and street markets. A food lover could spend a week there without eating the same meal twice.

Lucerne has a small set of very fine sights. The painted Chapel Bridge, the Musegg towers, the Lion Monument and the Picasso and Klee at the Rosengart can all be seen in a day or two.

Paris works on a different scale. The Louvre alone outlasts all of Lucerne, and the Orsay, the Pompidou, the Orangerie, Sainte-Chapelle and the Haussmann boulevards, Marais townhouses and Seine embankments around them can fill a long stay. The cost is queues, so book the big museums ahead.

Lucerne's evenings end early. After a drink in a riverside wine bar or one of the few cocktail bars in the Neustadt, the lakefront is mostly empty by midnight. Fasnacht is the one time the whole town stays out until dawn.

Paris has a real nightlife. Evenings start on a terrace or in a wine bar, move to the bars of Oberkampf, the Canal Saint-Martin and Belleville, and go on in house and techno clubs and on moored barges after the bars close. It is stylish rather than wild, and doors can be selective, but there is far more choice.

This is where Lucerne clearly beats Paris. The lake winds between the peaks, and Pilatus at 2,128m is reached by cogwheel railway. Rigi, the Stanserhorn and the glacier on Titlis are close as well, and with steamers and mountain trains you can combine a boat ride, a summit and a hike in one day. In winter there is skiing and sledging, though low cloud can hide everything for days.

Paris offers gardens and woods. The Buttes-Chaumont, the Bois de Vincennes and the forest at Fontainebleau, with its climbing boulders, are good for running, cycling and gentle walks, but there are no mountains or wild views.

Both cities make good bases, and Paris has the longer list. From Lucerne, trains reach Bern, Basel and Zurich in under an hour, and the lake itself is an outing, with boats to Vitznau, Brunnen and the Rütli meadow of the William Tell story.

From Paris you can take in Versailles, Fontainebleau, Chartres and Monet's garden at Giverny, and fast trains bring Reims, Rouen, the Loire and Brussels within reach. There is enough variety to fill as many days as the city itself.

Lucerne is small, flat, very safe and easy with children. The Transport Museum easily fills a day, and cogwheel trains and paddle steamers feel like rides in themselves. However, it has no zoo or aquarium, and on rainy days you can run out of ideas.

Paris offers much more for children. Disneyland and Parc Astérix are within easy reach, and the city has the Cité des Sciences, the zoo at Vincennes, the aquarium and the carousels and toy boats of the Luxembourg. The trade-off is the daily hassle: metro stairs with a pushchair, small hotel rooms and long queues.

Both are very easy cities to get around, but in different ways. In Lucerne the station, the boat piers and the Old Town all sit together on the lakefront, and the same integrated tickets cover the steamers, mountain railways and cable cars, so the transport is part of the trip.

Paris is bigger and has a dense metro, so a station is always close and the walk along the Seine between sights is a pleasure. Expect stairs, crowded lines at rush hour and pickpockets, none of which you will notice much in Lucerne.

In Lucerne, shopping mostly means Swiss watches, army knives and chocolate around Schwanenplatz, with a few boutiques in the Old Town. There is very little fashion or design.

Paris is one of the world's great shopping cities. It has the couture flagships on Avenue Montaigne, the department stores Galeries Lafayette and Le Bon Marché, and independent designers in the Marais. The covered passages, the Saint-Ouen flea market and the bouquinistes along the Seine add antiques and old books that Lucerne cannot match.

Neither city is cheap, but Lucerne costs noticeably more. Hotels and simple meals are expensive, and the mountain railways that make the trip worthwhile add a lot to the bill. Lake picnics and a Swiss travel pass help only a little.

Paris gives a careful traveller more room. You can walk much of the centre, and bakeries, markets, lunchtime set menus and the free permanent collections of the city's own museums keep costs down. Staying in the outer arrondissements helps too, so a sensible budget can work in a way it cannot in Lucerne.

For classical music, Lucerne is far stronger than its size suggests. In festival weeks, top orchestras play in Jean Nouvel's concert hall, which is known for its sound. Outside those weeks the programme is that of a small city, with little live music on most nights.

Paris has the depth all year: ballet at the Palais Garnier, opera at the Bastille, the Philharmonie, and church concerts in Sainte-Chapelle. It also has jazz cellars in Saint-Germain, cabaret in Pigalle and the Comédie-Française, though most of the theatre is in French.

Lucerne's kind of rest is calm. It has quiet evenings, slow steamer trips on the lake and the Botta-designed mineral bath high on the Rigi, where you soak with the mountains in view. For massage and treatments, both cities depend on hotel spas.

Paris has the tiled steam rooms and mint tea of the Grande Mosquée hammam in the Latin Quarter instead, a bathing habit brought by its North African communities. Beyond that, rest in Paris comes in short breaks, such as an hour on a chair in the Luxembourg gardens or an evening walk by the Seine, in a city that is otherwise loud and fast.