Nuremberg or Piran?

Here the gap is wide. Nuremberg has no swimming of its own beyond outdoor pools and leisure baths. The Franconian Lake District around the Brombachsee is an hour away, with grassy shores for a summer afternoon in a short season.

Piran is a real swimming town, though not a sandy one. You climb down ladders and off concrete platforms below the walls and around the Punta into a warm Adriatic, or walk to the pebbles at Fiesa. For sand go to Portoroz, and for quiet go to Strunjan.

Nuremberg gives you more to eat and drink. There are finger-sized bratwurst off the beechwood grill, Schäufele with dumplings and Lebkuchen all year. Above all there is a Franconian brewing culture, with smoky Kellerbier in the taverns and in the beer gardens along the Pegnitz.

Piran's food is lighter and the choice is narrower: grilled fish, squid and scampi buzara in konobas on the Punta, with Malvazija, Refosk, Istrian olive oil and local salt. You eat well, but the harbour menus repeat each other and the better cooking is inland in Istria.

Nuremberg is by far the richer city for sightseeing. Its near-complete walls enclose the Kaiserburg, St Sebaldus and St Lorenz, Dürer's house and a museum of German art and history large enough to fill a day. The Rally Grounds and Courtroom 600 add a sobering twentieth-century side.

Piran is one beautiful old town to wander: Tartini Square, the Venetian Gothic lanes and the view over the red roofs from St George's campanile and the walls. Its maritime museum, aquarium and Minorite cloister are modest, and a day covers the lot.

Neither is a party destination, but Nuremberg at least gives you a choice of evenings. There are old-town taverns and wine bars, students on the riverbanks in summer, and the small bars and alternative venues of Gostenhof. Piran goes quiet early after a sunset glass on Tartini Square or the Punta, and its few summer clubs and the casino are along the shore in Portoroz.

The outdoors are about as good in both, but very different in character. Nuremberg is forest country. The Reichswald begins at the edge of town, and Franconian Switzerland's limestone towers, caves and climbing crags are an hour north-east.

Piran's outdoors is the coast: the flysch cliffs and the path above them at Strunjan, kayaking below them, the wading birds of the Secovlje salt pans, the Parenzana cycle route through olive groves, and the Skocjan caves on the Karst. Neither offers mountains, and both are best for walkers and cyclists.

Both are excellent bases, and the difference is in how you travel and what you see. From Nuremberg, trains take you in about an hour to Bamberg, Regensburg, Würzburg or Munich, and a little further to Rothenburg on the Romantic Road. That is a run of German old towns that needs no car.

From Piran you cross borders instead: Trieste in Italy, Rovinj, Porec and Motovun in Croatian Istria, Predjama Castle and Ljubljana in Slovenia, and summer boats to Venice. The mix is more varied, but most of it is easiest with a hire car.

Nuremberg has more built for children. The city's toy-making tradition gives it a Toy Museum, and there is a railway museum with real locomotives, a large zoo in old quarries and a play park in Zirndorf. In Advent a separate children's Christmas market is added.

Piran's strengths with children are calm and safety rather than things to do. A car-free old town and a warm, calm summer sea make a few days easy, and Portoroz has a shallow, sandy beach. Beyond the small aquarium, though, older children may run out of things to do.

Both centres are walkable, but in Nuremberg you can reach far more without a car. The walled old town is about 1.5km across, with the main station at its gate. One ticket covers the U-Bahn, trams and S-Bahn out to the Rally Grounds, the zoo and Fürth, and regional trains run to the day-trip towns.

Piran is even simpler inside: you cross its car-free lanes in a quarter of an hour, and a shuttle runs to Portoroz. There is no railway, though, and buses are slow beyond Koper, so exploring further usually means hiring a car.

Nuremberg is the better place to shop, though not a remarkable one. It has chain and department stores on Königstraße, wooden toys and tin figures, crafts in the Handwerkerhof and Lebkuchen in decorated tins, and in Advent the Christkindlesmarkt on the Hauptmarkt. Piran has little beyond a few galleries, craft shops and harbour souvenirs. The things worth taking home are salt flower from the Secovlje pans, Istrian olive oil and coastal wine.

Costs are broadly similar in both. Each gets expensive at certain times rather than all year. In Nuremberg the pressure is on hotels during the big trade fairs and in Advent, while tavern meals, beer and transport stay cheap.

In Piran the expensive time is summer, when old-town rooms and waterfront tables cost more. Staying in Portoroz, eating in konobas or coming out of season brings costs down, and swimming and walking cost nothing.

Nuremberg has a proper season. The Art Nouveau Staatstheater stages opera, ballet and drama in repertory, two orchestras perform, and summer brings an open-air concert in the Luitpoldhain and the free folk and world music of the Bardentreffen. Piran's programme is small and seasonal, mostly summer concerts honouring Tartini in churches, the monastery cloister and on the main square, and out of season there is little on.

Piran is the better place to unwind. Portoroz grew up as a spa resort and uses seawater pools, brine baths and mud from the salt pans. There is also an outdoor thalasso spa among the lagoons and a seawater health resort at Strunjan, and Piran's car-free lanes keep the pace slow.

In Nuremberg, relaxing follows the German sauna habit and stays more urban. There are the thermal spa and sauna gardens in Fürth, the nude mixed saunas at the edge-of-town leisure pools, the saline pools of Bad Windsheim an hour west, and long afternoons in the beer gardens.