Oxford or Paris?

Neither city has a beach, and from both of them the sea is a separate trip. The south coast is more than an hour and a half from Oxford, and the Normandy coast is about two hours from Paris by train. In Oxford, swimming feels like being in the countryside: you get into the Thames off Port Meadow or into the Cherwell from grassy banks, or you use the open-air pool at Hinksey.

In Paris, swimming is a city affair. In summer, sand and deckchairs are laid out along the riverbanks, and there are swimming spots in the Bassin de la Villette and the Seine. For the rest of the year there are handsome Art Deco public pools.

Food is one of the widest gaps between these two cities. Oxford eats well but plainly: ale and a Sunday roast in a beamed tavern or riverside pub, lunch at the Covered Market, and cheap, varied cooking up Cowley Road. Beyond a handful of serious restaurants, the centre is mostly chains.

In Paris, eating is a reason to go in itself. You can move from a morning market at Aligre to a zinc-counter bistro, from a neo-bistro in the 11th to couscous in Belleville, and the patisserie and terrace cafés fill the gaps between. The only trap is the set-menu streets right beside the big sights.

Oxford's strength is concentration. Working college quads, the Radcliffe Camera, the Bodleian and Christ Church sit within a few minutes of each other, and the Ashmolean and Pitt Rivers are better than such a small city has any right to. Two or three days cover it properly.

Paris works at another scale. The Louvre alone outlasts all of Oxford, and the Orsay, Orangerie, Rodin and Cluny museums, the Sainte-Chapelle and the Haussmann boulevards would each make a trip in their own right. The cost of that richness is queues and the need to book ahead.

Paris gives you a proper night out and Oxford mostly does not. Evenings in Oxford mean a historic tavern or a summer pint by the Thames, with Cowley Road's late bars as the liveliest option. The city follows the university calendar and goes quiet in the long vacation.

Paris runs from wine-bar terraces to the crowded bars of Oberkampf and Belleville, cocktail bars in South Pigalle and the gay scene in the Marais, then on to house and techno clubs and riverside barges until dawn. The feel is chic rather than wild, and doors can be selective.

These two are much alike: gentle green space rather than wild landscape. In Oxford the countryside comes right up to the centre, with cattle on Port Meadow, flat towpaths and punts on the river. The Cotswolds, the Chilterns and the Ridgeway are within an hour.

Paris is greener in a more formal way, with the Luxembourg and Tuileries gardens, the cliffs of the Buttes-Chaumont and the large Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes. The forest of Fontainebleau, about forty minutes by train, adds sandstone boulders that draw climbers, and Oxford has nothing like them.

Both are excellent bases, but Paris reaches further and more easily. From Oxford, Blenheim Palace is about twenty minutes away, London is an hour by train, and Bath, Stratford and Windsor are all within reach. The Cotswold villages, though, really need a car or a tour.

From Paris, Versailles, Fontainebleau, Chantilly and Giverny are close, and fast trains bring Reims and its Champagne houses, Rouen, the Loire châteaux and even Brussels within a comfortable day. On a long stay you could fill a week with outings alone.

Paris gives children far more to do. Disneyland and Parc Astérix are a short train ride away, and the Cité des Sciences, the Jardin d'Acclimatation, the zoo, the aquarium, and the carousels and toy boats of the Luxembourg can fill days in the city. The drawbacks are stairs in the metro, cramped hotel rooms and long queues.

Oxford is calmer and easier with a pushchair, but it runs out sooner. The free Natural History Museum with its dinosaurs, the Pitt Rivers, punting and the Harry Potter spots at Christ Church are the highlights. Most of the rest, from the wildlife park to the studio tour, means a trip out of the city.

Both centres are best on foot, but Paris covers its much larger area better. Its dense metro puts a station a few minutes from almost anywhere, and the RER runs to the airports, Versailles and Disneyland. The price is long corridors, stairs, packed rush hours and pickpockets.

Oxford needs no system at all: you can cross the centre on foot in twenty minutes, several streets are closed to traffic, and the station is a short walk away. Buses and bikes handle the suburbs, and in both cities a car is a burden.

This is where the two cities are furthest apart. Paris is where luxury fashion began, with the great houses on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the department stores of Galeries Lafayette and Le Bon Marché, Marais concept stores, the covered passages, the Saint-Ouen flea market and the bouquinistes along the Seine.

Oxford is mostly high-street chains. What makes it worth browsing is Blackwell's, the Covered Market traders, the independents of Jericho and the antique map sellers. For designer labels you need to go out to the Bicester outlet village.

Neither is cheap, and the main cost in both is a bed. Oxford has very few central rooms, and university events keep them dear, so many visitors stay near the ring road or come for the day from London. Once you are there, the free museums and pub meals keep spending modest.

Paris rooms are costly and small too, and the big museums charge full admission. You can save with free permanent collections in the city's own museums, bakeries and lunchtime set menus, a riverside picnic and a hotel in the outer arrondissements.

Oxford's great live experience is Evensong. Hearing the choirs of Christ Church, Magdalen or New College in term is something Paris cannot offer in quite the same way, and the Holywell Music Room and the Sheldonian add concerts. Theatre is mostly touring shows and student productions in college gardens.

Paris has much more on overall, from the Palais Garnier and Opéra Bastille to the Philharmonie, concerts in the Sainte-Chapelle, jazz cellars on the rue des Lombards, and cabaret in Pigalle. The serious theatre is largely in French.

Neither city suits a vacation built around treatments, but Paris has a little more to offer. The tiled steam rooms and mint tea of the Grande Mosquée hammam and a few smaller neighbourhood hammams give it a bathing culture of sorts, though the city's noise and pace work against real rest.

Oxford has almost no spas. Its calm comes instead from places: the Botanic Garden, Addison's Walk past the Magdalen deer park, and a slow afternoon on a punt.