Paris or Saint-Tropez?

Paris is inland. In summer it has sand on the riverbanks, swimming in the Bassin de la Villette and the Seine, and handsome Art Deco pools, all fine for cooling off but nothing like a beach. The nearest sea is the cool Channel at Deauville and Trouville.

Saint-Tropez is built for beach days. Pampelonne gives you about 5km of fine pale sand, with beach clubs and public stretches side by side, and the coves at Escalet, Cap Taillat and Gigaro are quieter. The catch is that the best sand is a drive out of town on the Ramatuelle side.

Paris is one of the world's great food cities. You can eat well at every level, from the stalls of the Marché d'Aligre and zinc-counter bistros up to haute cuisine. The small, inventive neo-bistros of the eastern arrondissements, the North African cooking of Belleville and the Vietnamese pho of the south-east add a lot more variety.

Saint-Tropez has a narrower Provençal menu: grilled fish, bouillabaisse, aïoli, local rosé, and a tarte tropézienne after the Place des Lices market. The top restaurants are good, but cheap everyday meals are hard to find, and much of the town closes in winter.

Paris could keep a visitor busy for weeks, with the Louvre, the Impressionists at the Orsay, the Gothic glass of the Sainte-Chapelle and the Haussmann boulevards and Marais townhouses that frame them. Saint-Tropez has a fine small collection of Signac-era pointillist and Fauvist painting at the Annonciade, a maritime museum in the citadel and the lanes of La Ponche. That is a pleasant morning or afternoon, and it is not the reason people go.

Paris has the broader night out, all year round. Evenings begin in wine bars and crowded, unpretentious bars around Oberkampf, the Canal Saint-Martin and Belleville, move on to cocktail bars in South Pigalle, and end in house and techno clubs open until dawn.

Saint-Tropez has one thing Paris cannot match: the summer sequence of Pampelonne beach-club parties, champagne on the harbour and a few famous clubs. It is moneyed, comes with table service and a dress code, and largely shuts down by October.

In Paris, nature means parks. You get the formal Luxembourg and Tuileries gardens, rowing in the Bois de Vincennes, and the woods and climbing boulders of Fontainebleau about forty minutes away by train.

Saint-Tropez puts you in real landscape. The coastal path runs past coves and headlands to the capes of Camarat and Taillat, the cork-oak forests of the Maures suit hiking and mountain biking, and the gulf is good for sailing and diving. In summer, heat and fire risk can close some trails.

From Paris, day trips are easy and many. Versailles, Chartres, Giverny and Fontainebleau are each about an hour or less away, and fast trains bring the Champagne houses of Reims, Rouen's old town and the Loire château country within reach.

From Saint-Tropez the outings are smaller in scale: the hilltop villages of Ramatuelle and Gassin, Grimaud's castle, a boat across to Port Grimaud, and wine tastings on nearby estates. A longer day will take you to Porquerolles or Roman Fréjus. Almost every trip depends on roads that jam in high summer.

Paris has far more for children. Disneyland and Parc Astérix are each a short train ride away, and in the city there are the hands-on Cité des Sciences, the skeletons at the Jardin des Plantes, and carousels and toy boats in the Luxembourg. The hard parts are stairs in the metro and small hotel rooms.

In Saint-Tropez, the gently shelving sand at Pampelonne and Gigaro is ideal for small children, but there is little else for them. The town's scene is aimed at adults, and many families stay across the gulf in Sainte-Maxime.

Paris is easy to get around without a car. Its centre is a pleasure to walk, a metro station is never far, and the RER runs out to the airports and Versailles. Expect stairs and crowded trains at rush hour.

Saint-Tropez itself is tiny, but it has no railway, the main beaches are several kilometres out, and the single road along the gulf jams for hours in July and August. The passenger boats from Sainte-Maxime and Port Grimaud are often the best way in.

Paris has the depth: the great fashion houses on Avenue Montaigne, Galeries Lafayette and Le Bon Marché, designers and vintage shops in the Marais, the covered passages, the Saint-Ouen flea market and the bouquinistes on the Seine.

Saint-Tropez has an unusual amount of luxury for its size, but mostly in summer resort form, plus hand-stitched Tropézienne sandals and the linen and baskets of the Place des Lices market. Away from that end of the market there is little choice, and many shops close for the winter.

Both are expensive, but Paris leaves more room to save. Public transport is reasonable, the city's own museums have free permanent collections, and bakeries, markets and lunchtime set menus keep meals in check.

Saint-Tropez in July and August is priced for the yachting crowd, from rooms to beach loungers, and taxis or parking add to the bill. Visitors on a budget usually stay inland or across the gulf and come in for the day.

Paris offers a full programme all year. Ballet is at the Palais Garnier, opera at the Bastille, and symphony concerts at the Philharmonie. There are also chamber concerts in the Sainte-Chapelle, jazz cellars in Saint-Germain and cabaret in Pigalle.

Saint-Tropez has open-air classical and jazz evenings on the citadel in summer and the centuries-old Bravade procession each May. For anything more you must drive to Toulon or Nice.

Neither is a proper wellness destination, and both rely on hotel spas. They differ in the kind of rest they offer. Paris has the tiled steam rooms and mint tea of the Grande Mosquée hammam, and quiet moments in the Luxembourg gardens. Saint-Tropez has no hammam to match, but in May, June and September the whole town slows to long lunches and pétanque under the plane trees.