Lucerne or Piran?

Piran has the sea and Lucerne has a lake, and for swimmers that settles it. In Piran you climb down ladders from the concrete platforms and rocks below the walls into clear, warm Adriatic water from June to September. For somewhere to lie down there are the pebbles at Fiesa and the small sandy beach at Portoroz.

In Lucerne a swim is a summer extra rather than a reason to come. You swim from the lawns and jetties at Ufschötti or from the old wooden lake baths, in water that is clean and calm but only pleasantly warm in July and August. Neither place has a long sandy beach.

Neither city is a food destination, and the difference lies in the kind of cooking. Lucerne's food is Alpine and rich: Chügelipastete, fondue, rösti and lake perch in wood-panelled guild houses, all at high prices.

Piran's food comes from the sea: grilled fish, squid and scampi buzara with Istrian olive oil, Malvazija and local salt, eaten simply by the harbour. In both places the menus on the tourist strip repeat each other. For more variety, try the bistros of Lucerne's Neustadt, or drive from Piran into the Istrian hinterland.

Lucerne has more to see. Beyond the Chapel Bridge and the Water Tower there are the Lion Monument, the Musegg Wall towers you can climb, the Picasso and Klee of the Rosengart Collection and the Bourbaki Panorama, which together fill two full days.

In Piran the appeal is the town itself: Venetian Gothic lanes around Tartini Square and the view from the campanile of St George's. A maritime museum and a monastery cloister are almost all it has to add. It is a fine place to wander without a plan, and a single day covers it.

Both towns go to bed early, but Lucerne has a little more for after dinner. It has wine bars along the Reuss, cocktail bars and a small club scene in the Neustadt, lively student weekends, and Fasnacht, the carnival before Lent, which runs until dawn. A Piran evening is a glass of wine at sunset on the Punta or Tartini Square, and anything livelier means the beach bars, casino and summer clubs of Portoroz.

The outdoors is Lucerne's strongest suit. Pilatus rises to 2,128m right above the city, and Rigi, across the water, has walks along its ridges. Titlis has a glacier and snow about an hour away. You can combine boat, rail and hiking in a single day, and there is skiing in winter.

Piran's outdoors is coastal and gentle. There are the flysch cliffs and coastal path at Strunjan, the wading birds of the Secovlje salt pans, kayaking along the shore and the Parenzana cycle route inland. The Karst and the Skocjan caves are within an hour, but there are no high mountains nearby.

Both towns make excellent bases, in different ways. From Lucerne, the Swiss rail network puts Zurich, Bern and Basel under an hour away, and the lake steamers reach the Rütli meadow and the William Tell country, all without a car.

Piran's advantage is the border. Trieste is in Italy, Rovinj, Porec and Motovun are across the line in Croatian Istria, and Predjama Castle and Ljubljana are in Slovenia, with summer boats to Venice on top. Most of these trips are much easier with a hire car.

Lucerne is the better choice with children, largely thanks to the Swiss Museum of Transport, which fills a day on its own. There are also the Glacier Garden's mirror maze, the wildlife park at Goldau, and the fun of steamers, cogwheel trains and the toboggan run on Pilatus, although the rides soon add up.

Piran is safe and car-free, with a calm, warm sea and a small aquarium. Swimming is from concrete ledges, though, and there is little else for older children. It suits a few days by the water better than a long family stay.

Lucerne is the easier of the two. The station, the steamer piers and the Old Town sit together on the lakefront, and the integrated Swiss network carries you on by boat, train, cogwheel railway and cable car, so you never need a car.

Piran is simple to cross on foot, being a small, car-free peninsula, but getting beyond Portoroz is slow. There is no railway, the regional buses are limited, and most visitors hire a car to explore.

Lucerne has the better shopping, though the range is narrow: watch and jewellery houses on Schwanenplatz, army knives, chocolate and the Saturday market by the river. In Piran it comes down to galleries, craft shops and souvenirs along the harbour, and the best buys are things to eat and drink: salt flower from the Secovlje pans, Istrian olive oil and coastal wine. Neither town is good for fashion, and shoppers in Piran end up in Trieste or Ljubljana.

Piran is by far the cheaper stay. Old-town rooms do climb in price in July and August. Simple konobas, local wine, a base in Portoroz or a trip outside the summer keep costs reasonable, though, and swimming and walking cost nothing.

In Lucerne there is no escaping the expense. Hotels, ordinary meals and above all the mountain railways and cable cars weigh heavily on the budget, and a Swiss travel pass and picnics by the lake only soften the blow.

For live music, Lucerne is in a different league. The Lucerne Festival brings the world's leading orchestras and soloists to Jean Nouvel's hall on the lake. The hall also has a year-round programme with the city's own symphony orchestra, and the city theatre adds opera and dance.

Piran's music is a small summer pleasure: Tartini concerts in churches, in the monastery cloister and on the main square, and the odd recital at the Tartini Theatre. Outside summer there is little on.

Piran is the better place to unwind, because the sea and the salt pans are part of the treatment. Portoroz has brine baths and salt-pan mud, there is an outdoor thalasso spa among the Secovlje lagoons and Strunjan has a seawater resort, all close to a car-free town that slows you down.

Lucerne has no bathing tradition of its own, so spa time means hotel spas or the mineral bath designed by Mario Botta on the Rigi. Its calm comes from walks along the lake promenades and afternoons on a steamer, though the Old Town fills with tour groups in the middle of the day.