Vilnius or Warsaw?

Neither city is a place to come for water, and both are far from the Baltic. What differs is how you get wet. Vilnius has real lake swimming close by, at the Green Lakes on the northern edge, Balžis and the lakes around Trakai. In Warsaw people mostly lie on the sandy Vistula banks with a drink, and the river is not for swimming, so a dip means the Zegrze reservoir, outskirts lidos or an outdoor pool.

Warsaw is the better city to eat in. It covers more ground, from pierogi and żurek in old dining rooms and cheap milk-bar counters to ambitious tasting menus, market-hall food courts, cake shops and vodka served with herring.

Vilnius is good for trying Lithuanian cooking: cepelinai, cold pink šaltibarščiai, garlic fried bread with craft beer, and Karaim kibinai on a trip to Trakai. Halės market is worth a browse. Beyond that, though, the range is narrower, and the meals tend to be pleasant rather than memorable.

Both cities reward a culture trip about equally, but in opposite ways. Vilnius's Old Town is the real thing, a large medieval and baroque centre that survived, so the pleasure lies in wandering among St Anne's, the Gate of Dawn and the university courtyards, with the former KGB building as its most powerful museum.

Warsaw's Old Town was rebuilt from paintings after 1944, and its strength is indoors: the Warsaw Rising Museum and POLIN rank among Europe's strongest history museums. The palaces along the Royal Route out to Łazienki and Wilanów add grandeur that Vilnius does not try to match.

Warsaw is the stronger city for going out, and it has more variety. It has the packed pavilion bars, Mazowiecka Street, a younger crowd in Powiśle, techno in old Praga factories, and summer beach bars along the Vistula, and the clubs keep going through winter.

Vilnius has lively weekends thanks to its students, with cellars and cocktail bars around Vokiečių and Pylimo streets and a small electronic scene on the edge of the centre. It is compact, though, and goes quiet midweek and in the dark months.

Both offer gentle lowland green rather than scenery, but Vilnius has the more varied setting. Its wooded hills and river valleys at Pavilniai and Verkiai are a short bus ride out, hot-air balloons cross the Old Town on summer evenings, and the Trakai lakes and Aukštaitija's canoe routes are close.

Warsaw's best asset is Kampinos National Park, with dunes, marshes and elk just past the suburbs. The untamed eastern bank of the Vistula is unusual for a capital, but the land around it is flat.

Vilnius makes the easier base for outings. Trakai's island castle is half an hour away, Kaunas and its interwar modernism are about an hour by train, and UNESCO-listed Kernavė is closer still.

From Warsaw, the stars of Poland, Kraków and Toruń, need an overnight stay. Day trips mean Łódź's factory palaces, Chopin's birthplace at Żelazowa Wola, the gardens at Nieborów or the Treblinka memorial, which is a solid list but runs out sooner.

Warsaw is far better geared to children. The Copernicus Science Centre can fill a whole day, and there is a large zoo, playgrounds in Łazienki and the Saxon Gardens, and fountain shows on the river in summer.

Vilnius is calm and safe, and children like the funicular to Gediminas Tower and rowing boats at Trakai. However, it has no zoo or aquarium, and the cobbled Old Town is hard work with a pushchair.

Both are easy without a car, and both have a quick rail link from the airport. Vilnius does it on foot: the sights sit close together on hilly cobbles, with buses and trolleybuses for anything further. Warsaw is spread along wide post-war avenues, so you will use its trams and two metro lines, all on one ticket, to reach Wilanów or Praga.

Warsaw gives a shopper much more. It has large modern malls, a luxury department store, Polish designer labels along Mokotowska Street and weekend flea markets full of communist-era posters.

In Vilnius, shopping mostly means crafts: amber, linen, ceramics and woven sashes from the workshops of the Old Town and Užupis, with the Kaziukas fair each March. There is little in the way of fashion or designer shopping.

Both are good-value capitals that cost well below Western Europe, so the difference is in where the money goes. In Vilnius it is Old Town hotels on summer weekends that cost more. Warsaw's business trade pushes up central hotel rates on weekdays and during trade fairs, so a weekend stay there often comes out cheaper.

Warsaw has the bigger musical life. Its Grand Theatre has one of Europe's largest opera stages, there are Chopin recitals all year and free Sunday concerts in Łazienki in summer, and the city hosts the Chopin Piano Competition.

Vilnius is serious too, and affordable. It has a full opera and ballet season, the National Philharmonic, courtyard concerts in summer and an autumn jazz festival. The scene is smaller, and its celebrated avant-garde theatre is mostly in Lithuanian.

Neither has a bathing culture of its own, so in both a spa visit means hotel spas and the sauna zones of water parks. Warsaw's saunas come with Polish towel-waving rituals, and there is the graduation tower at Konstancin-Jeziorna on the city's edge. Vilnius is the calmer city to idle in, with quiet courtyards and slow mornings in Užupis cafés, while serious spa stays mean Druskininkai.