Munich or Rovinj?

Rovinj is the place to swim. The Adriatic is very clear and warm in high summer, you can swim from the stones right below the old town walls, and the Golden Cape shore gives you several kilometres of limestone ledges and small coves. Expect rock and concrete rather than sand, and pack water shoes.

Munich's swimming takes more effort and is more a pleasant extra. Locals sunbathe on the Isar gravel at the Flaucher, and the real swims are in the Starnberger See and the Ammersee, under an hour away by S-Bahn, where the fresh, alpine-fed water is cooler than the sea in Istria.

Munich has more to offer at the table, though most of it comes back to beer. You can sit in a beer hall or under the chestnuts of a beer garden with roast pork, white sausage and pretzels, pick at cheese and snacks in the Viktualienmarkt, eat in a starred restaurant, and find decent Italian, Turkish and Balkan food when you tire of Bavarian dishes.

Rovinj's cooking is more focused and more Mediterranean: grilled fish, scampi buzara, truffled fuži, Istrian oil and Malvazija wine. The best meals are in a few refined restaurants and in country konobas a drive away, because the harbour menus are written for passing visitors.

Munich has more sights than a long weekend can hold. The Kunstareal alone holds old masters, Greek sculpture and the Blue Rider painters, and there are also the Residenz, Nymphenburg and the vast Deutsches Museum, with the Dachau memorial just outside the city.

In Rovinj the main sight is the town itself: the pastel Venetian houses climbing to St Euphemia, a bell tower you can climb, and the Batana House on the fishing boats. It is charming and photogenic, and you will have seen it all in an afternoon.

Munich gives you a proper night out. The beer halls and beer gardens come first, then the cocktail and gay bars of Glockenbachviertel and Gärtnerplatz, student pubs in Schwabing, and techno clubs that run until morning at weekends. If you are there during the Oktoberfest, the whole city turns into a party.

Rovinj's evenings are gentler: a long dinner, a drink on the rocks at sunset, a few waterfront bars in summer, and quiet lanes by midnight. Clubbers will have to head to bigger resorts along the coast.

Munich has the bigger landscapes, because the Alps rise about an hour south. Trains reach the Zugspitze, Garmisch and Tegernsee for summer hiking and winter skiing. In the city itself there is the English Garden, with surfers on the Eisbach wave, and cycle paths run along the Isar.

Rovinj's outdoors is lower-key and based on the sea. You can walk or cycle the pine paths of the Golden Cape, kayak and dive around the archipelago's reefs and wrecks, and take a boat up the Lim Fjord to the oyster farms. Inland there are gentle vineyards, but no mountains.

Munich makes the stronger base, and nearly everything is reachable by train. You can go to Augsburg, Nuremberg and Regensburg, cross the border to Salzburg and Innsbruck, and visit the fairytale castles at Neuschwanstein and on the Chiemsee.

Rovinj's outings are fewer but still very good: Pula's Roman amphitheatre, the mosaics of the Euphrasian Basilica in Porec, the hill towns of Motovun and Hum, and the Brijuni islands. The difference is that most of them really need a car.

Munich is easier with children. There are the Hellabrunn zoo along the Isar, the hands-on rooms of the Deutsches Museum, an aquarium in the Olympic Park, playgrounds in the beer gardens, and Legoland within a day's reach. Transport also copes well with pushchairs.

Rovinj offers island boat trips, gelato and shady park paths, and the big campsites have pools. However, the sea is entered from rock with urchins, and pushing a pushchair up the old town's steep, polished cobbles is hard work.

Both towns have a walkable centre, but the similarity ends there. Munich's pedestrianised old town is linked to an integrated network of U-Bahn, S-Bahn and trams that reaches the museums, the lakes and the airport, and regional trains carry you to the mountains and other cities without a car.

In Rovinj, life in town is entirely on foot along the promenade, with taxi boats out to the islands. Once you leave town, though, there is no railway, only intercity buses, so the wineries and hill towns mean renting a car and hunting for summer parking.

Munich is a real shopping city, with luxury on Maximilianstrasse, department stores along Kaufingerstrasse, design boutiques in Glockenbach, the old delicatessen Dallmayr, and dirndls and lederhosen from specialist tailors.

Rovinj has no fashion streets at all. What it offers is regional produce, truffles, olive oil, Teran wine and brandies, plus the artists' studios along Grisia.

Neither is a cheap trip, but the costs work in different ways. In Munich, hotel rooms are dear all year and peak during the Oktoberfest and trade fairs, though beer-hall meals, bringing a picnic to a beer garden, free parks and token-fee museum Sundays help.

Rovinj's prices are seasonal. July and August bring resort rates and fish sold by weight, while private apartments, campsites, bakery lunches and a trip in late spring or September bring the cost down noticeably.

This is where the two differ most. Munich has the Bavarian State Opera in the National Theatre, three orchestras of real standing, chamber opera in the rococo Cuvilliés Theatre, operetta at the Gärtnerplatztheater, jazz clubs, and big concerts in the Olympic Park.

Rovinj offers summer concerts in St Euphemia, music on the harbour and occasional performances of bitinada singing, and very little the rest of the year. The bigger summer concerts are in Pula's arena.

Munich has a real bathing culture to offer. You can swim under the Art Nouveau vaults of the Müller'sches Volksbad, try textile-free saunas with infusion rituals, spend a day at the huge thermal complex at Erding, or go to the spa towns towards the mountains.

Rovinj relies on hotel spas and its slower pace: long lunches, late swims and walks in the pines. That works best in May, June and September, before the old town fills up.