Nice or San Marino?

Nice lives on its shore. About 7km of pebble beach runs below the Promenade des Anglais, the clear water is a short walk from most hotels, and the sandier coves at Villefranche and Beaulieu are a quick ride away. The stones are the drawback, which is why rented mattresses and water shoes help.

From San Marino the sea is a day out, about half an hour down the mountain to the sandy Romagna beaches at Rimini and Riccione. The sand is softer and the shallow water suits children, but the shore is lined with rows of numbered umbrellas, and an early swim before breakfast is out of reach.

Nice has a cuisine with its own identity, closer to Liguria than to Paris, and many places to eat it well. There is socca from wood ovens, pissaladière and stuffed vegetables, the Cours Saleya market, and rare Bellet wine from the hills. Avoid the promenade terraces and the city rewards curiosity.

San Marino serves the honest pasta, piadina and grilled meats of the Romagna hills. The summit, though, is set up for day visitors, and its view terraces rarely match their food. The better tables are down in Borgo Maggiore or over the border, so eating well takes some effort.

Nice gives you two or three days of sightseeing, and its real strength is art: Matisse among the Roman ruins of Cimiez, Chagall's biblical cycle, and MAMAC's Nouveau Réalistes. Behind these are the Savoyard old town and the Belle Époque villas of the old winter resort.

San Marino has one strong subject, an ancient republic on a cliff edge, told through the Guaita and Cesta towers, the Palazzo Pubblico and the basilica. It stays in the memory, but most visitors have seen it in half a day, and there is no major museum to fill a second one.

Nice offers a real night out, if a modest one. The lanes of Vieux Nice fill with wine bars, pubs and cocktail bars, the port has quieter bars for an older crowd, and in summer the beach clubs keep evenings going, though serious clubbing means Monaco or Cannes. San Marino goes silent once the coaches leave, which leaves dinner and a glass on a terrace above the lights of the coast, and anything later means driving down to Rimini.

Nice sits where the Alps meet the sea, and you feel that range. There are coastal paths round Cap Ferrat and Cap d'Ail, cycling on the corniches, and gorges and perched villages inland, with the Mercantour's high lakes and ibex about two hours away. In winter you can ski at Isola 2000 and be back by the sea for the evening.

San Marino's Monte Titano is a single limestone ridge of about 740m. It has fine views to the Adriatic, woodland paths down to Borgo Maggiore and quiet cycling roads in the Montefeltro hills. That is enough for a morning walk but not for an active week.

Both are good bases, but Nice is the easier and richer one. Monaco is about twenty minutes away by train. Most of the rest, from Èze and Menton to Antibes and Saint-Paul-de-Vence, takes under an hour by train or bus. Sanremo in Italy is a longer but simple train ride, and you need a car for none of them.

San Marino's trips are full of history: San Leo's fortress on its rock, the ducal court of Urbino and Ravenna's Byzantine mosaics. The only regular public link, though, is the bus to Rimini. You will want a car for the hill towns, and you have to go down to the coast to catch trains to Ravenna and Bologna.

Neither city is built around children, and Nice has the slight edge for day-to-day life with them. It has the flat promenade for pushchairs and bikes, the water jets and playgrounds of the Promenade du Paillon, Parc Phoenix, and Monaco's Oceanographic Museum nearby. The pebble beaches are its weak point.

San Marino thrills children with its towers, battlements and cable car, but the summit has little else for them, and its steps make pushchairs hard work. The theme parks, waterparks and shallow sandy beaches are down near Rimini and Riccione, so it suits a family with a car best.

Nice is flat and compact. You can walk from the old town to the port in half an hour, a tram runs from the airport to the centre, and regional trains run along the coast. You only need a car for the mountains.

San Marino is small but steep, with steps on almost every street and a cable car down to Borgo Maggiore. Arriving without a car means taking the bus up from Rimini, and outside the old town the local buses are too infrequent to rely on.

Nice has more range. Avenue Jean Médecin has the high-street chains and Galeries Lafayette, the luxury houses are around rue Paradis, Vieux Nice sells Provençal soaps and olive oil, and the Cours Saleya holds an antiques market on Mondays. San Marino's streets sell mostly souvenirs, crossbows, and stamps and coins for collectors, plus the lower-taxed perfume, watches and spirits that draw Italian shoppers, with an outlet centre on the valley floor. Shopping there is bargain hunting rather than browsing.

San Marino is the easier place to spend a week. Its hotels and trattorias are priced like provincial central Italy, the sights are cheap, and only the view terraces and most convenient hotels on the summit cost extra.

Nice costs noticeably more, above all for seaside rooms between June and September and for loungers and promenade terraces. Cheap trams and coastal trains, inexpensive city museums, and socca or market lunches help bring the bill down, and spring or late autumn helps further.

Nice has a real season at the red-and-gold Opéra de Nice, French drama at the Théâtre National, and two long-running events: the Nice Jazz Festival in July and the Carnival in February. San Marino has a small theatre, occasional concerts by local groups, and its summer Medieval Days with crossbow contests and flag-throwers, which is more pageant than performance. For opera or a proper concert season you would need to go to Bologna or Pesaro.

Neither has a bathing tradition. Nice relaxes you mainly through its rhythm: an early swim, a long lunch, a walk along the promenade at dusk, with hotel spas and thalassotherapy centres along the coast towards Monaco and Antibes. San Marino offers stillness once the day visitors leave, with evening walks on the walls and long views over the plain, but there is no sea on the doorstep and only a few hotel spas.