Paris or Zurich?

Neither city has a sea, but Zurich gives you real swimming. In summer its lake is clean and warm enough for long swims from the wooden bathing houses and lawned lidos along both shores, and the Letten river baths on the Limmat let you drift with the current.

Paris has its dressed-up riverbank beaches and swimming spots on the Bassin de la Villette and the Seine, which are fine for cooling off but little more. For the real coast it is about two hours to the cool Channel at Deauville. In either city you swim from grass, decks or sand brought in, never a natural beach.

Paris is one of the great eating cities, and Zurich is not trying to compete. In Paris good food is part of everyday life: neighbourhood bakeries and cheese shops, markets such as Aligre and the Enfants Rouges, zinc-counter bistros, natural-wine bars, inventive neo-bistros in the eastern arrondissements, and North African, Vietnamese and West African cooking in Belleville and across the south-east and north.

Zurich eats well but within a narrower range: veal in cream sauce with rösti, fondue and raclette in old guild houses, and excellent chocolate and confectionery from its long-established tea rooms. Its casual international places cluster around Langstrasse and the old industrial quarter, and there is little street food or market life. Every meal costs more than its Paris equivalent.

Paris is in a different league for sights. The Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, the Orangerie, the Pompidou, Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle would each justify a trip, and the Haussmann boulevards and the Marais make the streets themselves worth a week of walking.

Zurich's highlights are the Kunsthaus, the Swiss National Museum, the Rietberg's world art, and a compact old town with the Grossmünster and the Chagall windows of the Fraumünster. They are rewarding, but two or three days covers them, whereas Paris needs advance booking just to deal with the queues.

Paris has the bigger, more varied night out. It starts on a terrace or in a wine bar and spreads through Oberkampf, the Canal Saint-Martin and Belleville, with cocktail bars in South Pigalle, the gay scene in the Marais, and clubs and summer barges running house and techno until dawn.

Zurich's strength is narrower and more electronic. The clubs of Kreis 4, Kreis 5 and Zurich West go hard at weekends and August brings the Street Parade, but weeknights are quiet and the very high price of drinks keeps most evenings short.

Zurich has the scenery. The lake runs towards snow-capped peaks, the Uetliberg is a short train ride from the centre, and Rigi, Pilatus and ski areas such as Flumserberg are close enough for a day in the real mountains, summer or winter.

Paris is a city of gardens and woods: the formal Luxembourg and Tuileries, the cliffs of the Buttes-Chaumont, and the Bois de Boulogne and Vincennes for running and rowing. Fontainebleau's forest and climbing boulders are the best outing, but the region has no mountains, so expect gentle walks and flat cycling.

Both are excellent bases, and Paris has the longer list. Versailles, Fontainebleau, Chantilly, Chartres and Monet's garden at Giverny are all within about an hour, and fast trains reach Champagne at Reims, Rouen and the Loire châteaux, so a long stay can be planned around them.

Zurich's trips are about Switzerland itself, and they are just as easy by train: Lucerne's bridges, Bern's arcaded old town, Basel's museums, the Rhine Falls and Stein am Rhein. Where Paris offers palaces and cathedrals, Zurich offers lakes, Alpine towns and the abbeys of St Gallen and Einsiedeln.

Both work well with children, in different ways. Paris has the bigger attractions: Disneyland and Parc Astérix nearby, the Cité des Sciences, the Jardin des Plantes galleries, and carousels and toy boats in the Luxembourg. Day-to-day it is harder going, with stairs in the metro, small hotel rooms and long queues.

Zurich is the easier city to live in with a pushchair: clean, safe, with trams that take buggies, a superb zoo, and shallow lake lidos for summer afternoons. It has no theme park, and its quieter pace suits younger children best.

Zurich is the smoother of the two. Trams, trains, funiculars and even the lake boats share one ticket, services run to the minute, and the airport is a short ride from the main station.

Paris has the better walking city, with the river and the boulevards linking the Marais, Saint-Germain and the Louvre, and its metro is dense enough that a station is always close. The price is long corridors and stairs, packed lines at rush hour, pickpockets on the tourist routes and confusing changes onto the RER.

Paris wins comfortably on range. The couture houses on Avenue Montaigne, the domed Galeries Lafayette and Le Bon Marché sit alongside Marais designers and vintage shops, the old covered passages, the vast Saint-Ouen flea market and the bouquinistes on the Seine, with cheese, chocolate and mustard to take home.

Zurich is strong in a narrower field. Bahnhofstrasse is one of the world's great luxury streets, especially for watches and jewellery, and the Zurich West viaduct arches hold design shops, but beyond luxury, design and chocolate there is not much else.

Neither is cheap, but Paris is clearly easier on the wallet. Hotels and terrace drinks are costly, yet bakeries, markets, lunchtime set menus, free city museum collections and a riverside picnic keep daily spending under control.

Zurich is among the most expensive places in the world to visit, where a casual lunch costs what dinner does elsewhere. The travel pass, supermarket picnics by the lake and the free lidos help, but there is far less room to economise than in Paris.

Paris offers more, and more often. The Palais Garnier and Opéra Bastille, the Philharmonie and a full classical calendar are joined by the Comédie-Française, jazz cellars around the rue des Lombards, cabaret in Pigalle and concerts in old music halls.

Zurich does a lot for its size: the Opernhaus is among Europe's most respected, the Tonhalle Orchestra is first-rate, and the Rote Fabrik covers jazz and indie. Theatre in both is mostly in the local language, French in one and German in the other.

Zurich is the better place to unwind. It is quieter and slower, it has a thermal bath in the vaults of an old brewery with a rooftop pool, the lake and river bathing houses turn into saunas in winter, and Baden's Roman hot springs are twenty minutes away.

Paris has no bathing tradition of its own. The tiled hammam of the Grande Mosquée and the hotel spas are its best options, and otherwise rest means an hour on a terrace or a chair in the Luxembourg gardens away from the noise.