Vienna or Budapest?

Neither city has a beach, and both are equally limited for swimming. What they offer is different, though. Budapest's summer bathing happens in pools: the big strand lidos such as Palatinus on Margaret Island, with lawns, slides and wave pools.

Vienna swims in open water inside the city, on the gravel shores of the Danube Island and in the calmer Alte Donau. For a lake, Lake Velence is under an hour from Budapest, and the Neusiedler See is about the same distance from Vienna.

Vienna has a slight edge, mainly because of its wine. It grows its own: the Heuriger taverns of Grinzing and Stammersdorf pour the year's Grüner Veltliner among the vineyards on the city's edge. Its schnitzel, Tafelspitz and strudel are a cuisine in their own right. Budapest's cooking is heavier and redder with paprika, from goulash and fisherman's soup to lángos fresh from the fryer. The Great Market Hall shows off its ingredients better than the Naschmarkt does.

Both have a grand coffee-house tradition, and both are thin on food from beyond Central Europe. Budapest's wine bars are the better place to try a whole country's wines, from Tokaji to Eger reds.

Both are former imperial capitals with UNESCO-listed centres, but Vienna has more to see and more of it ranks among Europe's best. The Hofburg, Schönbrunn and the Ringstrasse fill several days. The museums are world-class: Bruegel at the Kunsthistorisches, Klimt at the Belvedere and Schiele at the Leopold.

Budapest's great sight is its setting: Parliament, the Castle hill and the Chain Bridge facing each other across the Danube. It also has a mix of periods Vienna lacks, with the Dohány Street Synagogue, Ottoman tombs and the communist statues of Memento Park.

Budapest is much the stronger city for going out. The ruin bars of the old Jewish Quarter spread through crumbling courtyards, and Kazinczy and Király streets stay loud well past 2am at weekends. In summer, party boats and riverside terraces take over the Danube. Cheap drinks also bring stag groups, so the centre can get rowdy.

Vienna's nights are slower. There are bars under the Gürtel arches, deckchairs along the Danube Canal and a small club scene. The one thing Budapest can't match is the winter ball season, with formal balls in palaces that visitors can buy tickets for.

The two are about even. Each has wooded hills on its western edge and the Danube for cycling and boating. The Buda Hills come with a cogwheel railway, the Children's Railway route and thermal caves underneath. An hour north, the Danube Bend has forested ridges.

Vienna's walks climb through vineyards to the Kahlenberg. It also has wild floodplain forest in the Donau-Auen national park. And it has the one thing Budapest's gentle surroundings lack: real limestone mountains at the Rax and Schneeberg, about 90 minutes away.

Vienna has the wider choice of short trips, thanks to its position near three borders. Bratislava and Brno are easy by train, and the Wachau valley has Melk abbey and the vineyards of Dürnstein. Baden, Klosterneuburg and Haydn's Eisenstadt are all close by.

From Budapest the obvious outing is the Danube Bend: painters' Szentendre, the citadel at Visegrád and the basilica at Esztergom. Further trips, such as Eger's wine cellars or the UNESCO village of Hollókő, take around two hours each way, which makes for a longer day.

Vienna is the easier city with children. Schönbrunn Zoo, the Prater's rides and meadows, and the shark tanks at Haus des Meeres cover fine days. On wet ones there are the Natural History Museum's dinosaurs and the ZOOM children's museum. The calm streets help too.

Budapest still has plenty for families. It has the City Park zoo, the Children's Railway run by schoolchildren and the hands-on Palace of Wonders. In summer the lidos with slides are a full day out. Expect more stairs and more weekend noise to plan around, though.

Both are easy without a car, but Vienna works better. Its walkable old town sits inside the Ring, and five U-Bahn lines, dense trams and buses all run on one ticket, with trains through the night at weekends. Even the vineyard villages are reached by public transport.

Budapest's flat Pest side is also easy to walk. Tram 2 along the embankment doubles as a sightseeing ride, and the little yellow carriages of metro line 1 are a sight in themselves. Buda is steeper and needs the funicular or buses, but taxis are cheap for late nights.

Vienna offers a little more. The Kohlmarkt and Graben have the luxury houses, and Mariahilfer Strasse and the Neubau side streets add everyday and independent fashion. Augarten porcelain, Loden coats and the Christmas markets give it some local character.

Budapest's best buys are edible or old. Think paprika and Tokaji from the Great Market Hall, Herend and Zsolnay porcelain, and communist-era finds at the Ecseri flea market. Váci utca, its most famous street, is mostly souvenirs.

Your money goes clearly further in Budapest. Wine, transport and ordinary coffee houses are cheap, and lunch menus in residential districts keep meals light on the wallet. Costs only climb around Váci utca and the Basilica.

Vienna is priced like the middle to upper end of Western Europe. Full admission at the big palaces and museums adds up over a stay. Set lunches, sausage stands, free palace gardens and opera standing places soften it, but it remains the more expensive trip.

Both are music cities, but Vienna is in a different league. The State Opera stages a different work on most nights, and the Vienna Philharmonic plays in the Musikverein's Golden Hall. The Konzerthaus, the Volksoper and the Burgtheater fill the rest of the week. It is the city where Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert worked, and their music is played every night.

Budapest is very good, and tickets are easier to get. The Opera House on Andrássy Avenue and the Art Nouveau hall of the Liszt Academy are superb places to hear music. Operetta and the national folk ensembles add something local, though its spoken theatre is almost all in Hungarian.

This is Budapest's greatest strength and the biggest gap between the two cities. Thermal bathing is part of daily life here. You can play chess in Széchenyi's steaming outdoor pools, swim under the mosaics at the Gellért, or sit in light from star-shaped openings in the Ottoman domes of Rudas and Király.

Vienna rests in a different way, through long coffee-house afternoons and palace gardens. For bathing it has Therme Wien in Oberlaa, the Art Deco Amalienbad and the sulphur springs of Baden. All are pleasant, but you have to make a trip to them rather than finding them part of the city's routine.