Sibiu or Varna?

This category belongs to Varna outright. A sandy beach runs along the city front below the Sea Garden, lifeguarded and served by piers and beach clubs, and the resorts to the north add broader sand within 20km. In July and August the water shelves gently and is usually calm.

Sibiu sits in the middle of Transylvania, far from any coast. The best it offers swimmers is a float in the dense salt lakes at Ocna Sibiului, plus outdoor pools and mountain reservoirs. They are pleasant on a hot day but no reason to go.

The two eat at much the same level, and both rely on hearty, unfussy home cooking rather than range. The difference is what lands on the plate. In Sibiu it is cabbage rolls with polenta, smoked pork, sheep's cheese from the Marginimea villages and the city's own dry salami, served in vaulted cellars around the squares.

Varna cooks for the coast: fried sprats, farmed mussels, turbot in season and grilled meats, with Black Sea whites and rakia, and it is best at the simple fish places by the port. Its seafront kitchens largely close outside summer, while Sibiu's heavy cellar dishes suit the cold months well.

Sibiu has the richer townscape. Its three linked squares, the Council Tower, the Gothic Lutheran Cathedral and the stretches of wall with guild towers make the whole centre the sight. The Brukenthal paintings and the ASTRA open-air museum in the Dumbrava forest add two substantial collections.

Varna's strengths lie in single sights rather than streets: the six-thousand-year-old Necropolis gold, the Roman Thermae and the gilded Dormition Cathedral, set among nineteenth-century houses and socialist-era blocks. You can see in a day or two what Sibiu spreads over two or three.

Varna offers the bigger night out, but only in summer. That is when the beach clubs below the Sea Garden run DJ terraces until dawn and Golden Sands adds a louder party strip. Off season it shrinks to cocktail bars and pubs in the pedestrian centre.

Sibiu stays modest all year, with student cellar bars, craft beer places and summer terraces around the squares, and a few clubs that are busy at weekends in term time. It suits a drink after dinner rather than a long night.

Sibiu has mountains on its doorstep and Varna does not. The Fagaras range rises above 2,500m to the east and has multi-day traverses, Paltinis gives easy summer walks and winter skiing, and brown bears live in the forests. You need a car to reach most of it.

Varna's outdoors is coastal and gentle. It has the shaded paths of the Sea Garden, the strange stone columns of Pobiti Kamani, the flooded riverside forest at Kamchia and the red cliffs of Cape Kaliakra, where dolphins are often seen. It suits paddling and easy walks rather than hiking.

Sibiu has the longer list within close reach. It includes the fortified churches at Biertan, Valea Viilor and Cisnadioara, walled Sighisoara, the Alba Iulia citadel and Corvin Castle, with the shepherd villages for an easy half day. Slow trains make a car or a tour almost essential.

Varna's excursions are fewer but varied. Along the coast are Nessebar's peninsula churches and the palace gardens at Balchik, and inland lie the early Bulgarian capitals at Pliska and Preslav and the Madara Rider carved into its cliff.

Varna is the easier choice with children because so much sits together in the Sea Garden: a zoo, the aquarium, a planetarium, the natural history museum and playgrounds. Steps lead down to lifeguarded sand, there are water parks a short ride north, and the flat promenade is easy with a pushchair.

Sibiu is calm and largely traffic-free. The ASTRA museum, with its windmills and lakes, makes a fine day out next to a small zoo, but little else is aimed at children and the old-town stairways are hard going with a buggy.

You get around both centres on foot, and both need a car or a tour for the countryside. The difference is the terrain and the buses. Sibiu's sights cluster around the pedestrianised Large Square, but reaching the Lower Town means steep lanes and stairs, and the airport is close to the centre.

Varna is flat, with a quarter-hour walk from the cathedral to the beach. Its buses to the resorts have Cyrillic signs and fill up in summer, so cheap taxis do much of the work.

Neither is a shopping destination, and the difference is one of kind. Sibiu leans to crafts such as painted ceramics, embroidered blouses and icons on glass, with a Christmas market and a summer pottery fair on the Large Square. Varna is more high street, with fashion chains along Knyaz Boris I street and malls nearby, and rose oil cosmetics are its main local find.

Both are among the cheaper places to travel in Europe. Tavern meals, local wine and beer, taxis and museum tickets all cost little in either city.

What differs is when prices rise. In Sibiu that happens during the June theatre festival and the Christmas market season. In Varna it is July and August, when room rates climb and the Golden Sands resorts charge noticeably more, so June or September is the cheaper window on the coast.

Sibiu has the edge, mainly because of its International Theatre Festival each June, which fills halls, churches and squares for over a week, and the Radu Stanca National Theatre, known well beyond Romania. A long-running jazz festival and the State Philharmonic add to it.

Varna leans towards music and dance, with opera, ballet and operetta in its grand theatre on the main square, the Varna Summer festival and, in some years, the International Ballet Competition. In both cities the programme outside the festivals is thin and mostly in the local language.

Varna has more for rest and treatment. Warm mineral springs supply the pools, mud treatments and spa hotels at St Konstantin and Elena and Golden Sands, and May, June and September bring slow walks in the Sea Garden, though high summer is loud near the beach clubs.

Sibiu has few spas of its own. Its bathing tradition lies 20km out at the salt lakes of Ocna Sibiului, and Paltinis offers clean mountain air, so the city's own appeal is mostly its unhurried pace.