Venice or Zagreb?

Venice has the only real beach of the pair. The Lido gives you kilometres of fine sand on the open Adriatic a short vaporetto ride from San Marco, with shallow, gentle water and quieter Pellestrina beyond, even if few visitors spend more than an afternoon there.

Zagreb is two hours from the sea. On a hot day, people cool off at Jarun's pebbly lakeshore or at Bundek, which is pleasant but no substitute for the coast, so anyone wanting sand should add a separate coastal stay.

Both cities eat well without being great food destinations, but the styles are very different. Venice is lagoon cooking eaten standing up: cicchetti and a spritz at a bacaro counter, then black cuttlefish risotto made with fish from the Rialto market. The catch is the run of poor tourist restaurants near San Marco.

Zagreb's food is hearty Central European: štrukli, turkey with mlinci, Zagorje sausages. Mornings start at Dolac market and evenings end with Plešivica wine. The bigger ritual there is coffee, with terraces full and a Saturday promenade around Flower Square.

In culture the two cities are not in the same league. In Venice the whole city is the monument: the Basilica and Doge's Palace, Gothic palazzi along the Grand Canal, and masterpieces even in the small parish churches, with the Accademia, the Guggenheim and the Biennale on top. A week barely covers it.

Zagreb has a likeable split between the medieval Upper Town, with the tiled roof of St Mark's, and the Austro-Hungarian Green Horseshoe below. Its museums, from the Mimara to Naive Art, are rewarding but not famous. Mirogoj cemetery is its most memorable sight, and two days see most of it.

Zagreb is the better night out. Café-bars along Tkalčićeva turn into drinking terraces, smaller cocktail and craft beer bars fill the Lower Town courtyards, and in summer the lakeside clubs at Jarun keep going late.

Venice has its best hour at aperitivo time, around the Rialto bacari and on the Fondamenta della Misericordia. After that only Campo Santa Margherita stays busy, and the canals are silent by midnight. That makes for a lovely walk but not much of a party.

Zagreb has the more usable outdoors. Medvednica's beech forests and mountain huts are a tram and bus ride away, Maksimir's oak woods sit in town, and the Samobor hills and Plitvice's waterfalls make good days out.

In Venice nature means the lagoon: salt marshes around Torcello with herons and flamingos, seen by kayak or from a rowing boat, and cycling along the sea walls of Pellestrina. Proper hills are an hour away and the Dolomites further still.

Venice is the stronger base for day trips. Fast trains reach Padua's Scrovegni Chapel in about half an hour, and Verona and Palladio's Vicenza are not much further, with the Brenta villas and the Prosecco hills close by. Murano, Burano and Torcello make a full day on the lagoon without boarding a train.

Zagreb's surroundings are pleasant rather than outstanding. You can visit Trakošćan castle and the Zagorje hills, baroque Varaždin, Samobor and Karlovac's star fortress, with Ljubljana as a long day, but none of them matches the cities of the Veneto.

Zagreb is the more practical choice with children. The Lower Town is flat, trams take pushchairs, and between the zoo in Maksimir, the Tesla technical museum, the funicular and summer swimming at Jarun there is enough for a few easy days.

Venice delights children with its boats, its car-free alleys and the glass furnaces on Murano, and the Lido is gentle for paddling. But hundreds of stepped bridges, summer crowds and very few playgrounds make it hard work, especially with small children.

Both centres are easy to explore on foot, but in different ways. Venice is walking or boats and nothing else: confusing alleys, stepped bridges that defeat wheeled luggage, and slow, crowded vaporetti along the Grand Canal.

Zagreb works like an ordinary city, with a dense network of blue trams, a flat Lower Town, a funicular up to the Upper Town and buses to Medvednica. The only real effort is the steep cobbles above the main square.

Venice is the more rewarding place to shop, as long as you buy carefully. Murano glass, Burano lace, papier-mâché masks, marbled paper and furlane slippers are made in workshops in Dorsoduro and Castello, and the big fashion labels line Calle Larga XXII Marzo. The fakes sold on the main routes are the trap.

Zagreb shopping is everyday: chains and some local design along Ilica, plus licitar hearts, Croatian neckties, truffle products and the Sunday flea market at Britanski trg. Neither city has much in the way of department stores.

This is where the two differ most in practice. Zagreb is one of the cheaper capitals in the EU, with reasonably priced central rooms, trams, museums and market food. Only smart restaurants and cocktails cost Western European prices.

Venice is expensive almost everywhere. Hotel rooms, water transport, church entry and a seat on San Marco all cost a lot, and keeping costs down means cicchetti at the counter, a bed in Mestre or a winter visit.

Venice has the grander stage. La Fenice, where Verdi and Rossini held premieres, runs a full season of opera, ballet and concerts, the Biennale adds contemporary festivals, and Vivaldi in candlelit churches is on almost every evening, though quality varies.

Zagreb has a solid local season at the Croatian National Theatre and the Lisinski hall, plus jazz and rock clubs, summer concerts in Upper Town courtyards and a rock festival at Jarun. Venice has almost none of that contemporary music.

Neither city has a bathing tradition of its own, and each has its thermal springs about an hour out of town. For Venice that means the hot mud and pools of Abano and Montegrotto near Padua. For Zagreb it means the spa resorts of Tuheljske and Krapinske Toplice in Zagorje.

Venice has the edge for a restful stay because of the hotel spas in grand palazzi and the hushed, traffic-free early mornings in Castello or on Giudecca. Zagreb's calm is the gentler kind of long café mornings and shady parks.