Venice or Zurich?

Venice has the better place to swim, because the Lido offers proper sand on the open Adriatic, with warm, shallow water that suits small children. The sea is greenish and much of the beach is lined with private cabanas, but it is a real beach.

Zurich has no sand at all. You swim from the lawns, piers and wooden decks of the lake baths, or float down the Limmat at Letten. The water is clearer than at the Lido and the bathing houses are part of local life, but the season is short and it is a summer dip, not a beach day.

Venice eats better, especially standing up. The bacari around the Rialto and in Cannaregio serve cicchetti with a glass of wine, and the lagoon supplies cuttlefish, soft-shell crab and the fish at the Rialto market. The price is a ring of poor tourist restaurants around San Marco that you have to walk past to eat well.

Zurich's food is solid but rarely thrilling: veal in cream with rösti, fondue in the guild houses, and chocolate and confectionery that outclass anything in Venice. The international and casual places in Kreis 4 and 5 give it more variety, but there are few markets or street stalls, and every meal is expensive.

This is where Venice pulls far ahead. San Marco, the Doge's Palace and the palazzi along the Grand Canal are only the start, because nearly every parish church holds major art, and the Biennale adds contemporary work at the Arsenale and Giardini. Even a week leaves plenty unseen.

Zurich has good collections rather than famous ones. The Kunsthaus, the Swiss National Museum, Museum Rietberg and the Chagall windows in the Fraumünster make two or three rewarding days, and the Grossmünster's role in the Reformation gives the compact Altstadt real historical weight.

Zurich is the city for a late night. Electronic music is its strength, with clubs in Kreis 4 and 5 and Zurich West running until morning at weekends, and Langstrasse busy late. In summer people drink at the lake bathing houses and along the Limmat. The cost of a round keeps most nights fairly short.

In Venice the evening peaks at aperitivo time, with spritzes along the Fondamenta della Misericordia and a student crowd in Campo Santa Margherita. After midnight the canals go quiet, which is good for a late walk but means going to the mainland or Jesolo if you want to dance.

Zurich wins easily outdoors. You can walk the lake shore with the Glarus Alps in view, take the train up the Uetliberg for forest trails, and reach Rigi, Pilatus or the slopes at Flumserberg within about an hour. Expect fog over the lake in late autumn and winter.

Venice's nature is quieter and flat: the salt marshes of the northern lagoon around Torcello, with herons and flamingos, seen by kayak or from a rowing boat. Cycling along the sea walls of Pellestrina is a pleasant change, but real hills are a long way off.

Both are excellent bases, and the difference is in what you go out to see. From Venice the trips are mostly about art and old cities: Giotto in Padua, Verona's arena, Palladio's Vicenza and villas, and Bologna further afield. There are also the lagoon islands of Murano, Burano and Torcello, reached by boat rather than train.

From Zurich the outings mix towns and scenery: Lucerne's bridges, the old towns of Bern and St Gallen, the Rhine Falls with Stein am Rhein, and a boat up the lake to Rapperswil. The Swiss trains make every one of these easy without a car.

Zurich is much easier with children. It is clean and orderly, the trams handle buggies, the zoo's Madagascar hall and elephant park fill a day, and the lake lidos have shallow corners and lawns. The Technorama and Lucerne's transport museum are easy trips by train.

Children love the idea of Venice, with its boats for buses, Murano's glass furnaces and the sandy Lido. In practice, stepped bridges, summer crowds and very few parks or playgrounds make it hard going, and it suits short stays with older children best.

Zurich is close to effortless. The blue trams, S-Bahn, funiculars and lake boats all run on one integrated ticket, and the airport is a short train ride from the main station.

In Venice you walk almost everywhere, through a maze of alleys that dead-end at canals, and the vaporetto supplies the scenic but slow connections. That is part of the pleasure, but hundreds of stepped bridges make suitcases, pushchairs and wheelchairs a real struggle.

Zurich offers more for a serious shopper. Bahnhofstrasse runs from the station to the lake past watchmakers, jewellers and long-established department stores, and Zurich West's viaduct arches add design shops. Beyond luxury, though, the range is narrow.

Venice's appeal is its crafts: Murano glass, Burano lace, papier-mâché masks, marbled paper and furlane slippers, best bought where you can see them being made. It has no department stores, and the main routes are full of imported fakes.

Neither city is cheap, but Venice is the easier one to manage. Standing at a bar for cicchetti, staying in Cannaregio or Castello, or sleeping in Mestre and visiting out of season all cut costs a lot.

Zurich stays expensive whatever you do. A simple lunch costs what dinner does elsewhere, and even modest rooms are dear. Supermarket picnics by the lake, the free lidos and drinking fountains, and a visitor card that bundles transport with museums help a little.

Zurich has the broader scene. The Opernhaus and the Tonhalle Orchestra are top class, the Schauspielhaus ranks among the leading German-language theatres, and the Rote Fabrik and the clubs of Kreis 4 and 5 bring jazz, indie and touring bands.

Venice centres on La Fenice, where Verdi and Rossini held premieres, and on nightly Vivaldi concerts in churches and scuole. The quality of those concerts varies, but hearing his music where he worked still means something. Beyond classical music there is little live music.

Zurich is better for a restful break. The thermal pools in the vaults of the old Hürlimann brewery, the winter saunas in the wooden lake baths with cold-water dips in between, and Baden's Roman springs twenty minutes away give real places to unwind.

Venice offers palazzo hotel spas and, an hour away near Padua, the mud baths of Abano Terme. What calms you there is the silence: early mornings without traffic, and the slow residential pace of Giudecca or outer Castello.