Antigua Guatemala or Trinidad, Cuba?

This is where the two differ most. Antigua is a highland town with no swimming nearby. Its closest shore, at Monterrico, is a long shuttle ride away, with black volcanic sand and strong currents, so in practice swimming means a hotel pool.

Trinidad has Playa Ancon about 15 minutes away, a long strip of pale sand on warm, calm Caribbean water with a reef for snorkelling, and La Boca offers a more local alternative. The beach is not the main reason to visit, but it makes an easy half-day between days in the old town.

Antigua eats better, largely because of the coffee grown on its own volcano slopes, which you can follow from bush to cup on a farm tour. Add pepián and jocón stews, tamales from street stalls, chocolate tastings and cheap set lunches at the central market comedores, and there is real variety for the first few days, even if fine dining is scarce.

Trinidad's best meals are often the dinners cooked in your casa particular: roast pork, black beans, ropa vieja and lobster. A canchanchara in a clay cup is the local ritual. Menus repeat from one paladar to the next, though, and there are no markets or street food to explore.

These are two colonial towns of a similar size, and both take two or three days on foot, but their histories show in different ways. Antigua has a slight edge for its ruins: after the 1773 earthquakes, churches and convents such as Capuchinas, Santa Clara and the cathedral were left roofless, with trees growing through the broken vaults, and the Santo Domingo monastery holds several small museums.

Trinidad is a sugar-era town that survived almost intact, with pastel houses, wooden window grilles and red-tiled roofs around the Plaza Mayor. Its planters' mansions hold the Museo Romantico and the history museum in the Palacio Cantero, whose tower gives the best view over the rooftops.

Trinidad keeps going later. People gather on the stone steps beside the Plaza Mayor for rum and salsa until late, and the night can end in a club inside a cave on the hill above town.

Antigua's evenings are quieter and more about drinks than dancing: rooftop bars looking out at the volcanoes, mezcal and craft beer behind colonial doorways, and a couple of salsa spots full of language students. Most places close well before the small hours. Neither town has much variety, so a few nights cover both.

Antigua has the bigger landscape. Three volcanoes surround the town, and the overnight climb up Acatenango to a camp facing the erupting Fuego is one of the great hikes in Central America. Pacaya is an easier half-day walk, and the coffee farms and cloud forest are close by.

Trinidad's outdoors is greener and wetter. You can reach the waterfalls and pools of Topes de Collantes in the Escambray mountains, ride horses through the Valle de los Ingenios or dive on the reef off Ancon. The trails are steep and humid, though, and you need a taxi or tour to get to them.

Trinidad has the stronger set of outings. The Valle de los Ingenios, with its ruined sugar mills and the Manaca Iznaga tower, begins just outside town. Cienfuegos, with its neoclassical centre, and the old colonial core of Sancti Spiritus are each about an hour and a half away, and Santa Clara's Che Guevara memorial is not much further. The catch is that you need a shared taxi, a hire car or a tour to reach them.

Antigua's valley villages, known for weaving and for an earlier capital, are a cheap chicken-bus ride away, and Iximché is manageable in a day. Its best-known outings, Lake Atitlán and the Chichicastenango market, are a long way each way, though, and are better done with an overnight stay.

Neither town is built for children, and the large cobbles defeat pushchairs in both. Antigua's appeal for families is hands-on: chocolate-making workshops, coffee-farm visits and the Pacaya walk for school-age children, with garden hotels and pools for downtime.

Trinidad has the one thing Antigua lacks, a shallow, warm beach for an easy family day. Against that, its heat, power cuts and patchy supply of familiar foods and medicines make it harder work with small children.

Both old towns are walked on rough cobbles, but Antigua is much easier once you leave the centre. Its compact grid has the volcanoes as landmarks, tuk-tuks handle the short hops, chicken buses run to the villages, and tourist shuttles cover the airport, the lake and the capital.

Trinidad's centre is pleasantly free of cars, but beyond it there is no public transport you can rely on. The beach, the mountains and the other towns all mean a taxi, a hired bike, a hire car or a tour, and the long-distance coaches are slow and infrequent.

Both towns sell crafts rather than fashion, but Antigua's selection is wider and more refined. You'll find handwoven huipiles from the highland villages, jade carving, embroidered bags and ceramics, design boutiques in colonial courtyards, and coffee and chocolate to take home.

Trinidad's specialities are hand embroidery, crochet tablecloths and pottery from family workshops, but the market lanes repeat the same goods from stall to stall. Rum and cigars are the other souvenirs, best bought from the state shops.

Overall the two cost about the same, but the money goes in different places. In Antigua, the restaurants and boutique hotels around the central park charge close to Western prices, while comedor lunches, hostels, tuk-tuks and chicken buses keep a careful budget in check.

In Trinidad, a room in a casa particular with breakfast is good value and the music in the squares is free or close to it, but the taxis to the beach and the mountains and the meals in paladares add up. You also need to bring enough cash, as cards are often not accepted.

Trinidad wins clearly here, because live music is the centre of every evening. Son and salsa play nightly at the Casa de la Musica and the Casa de la Trova, and the Palenque de los Congos Reales stages Afro-Cuban drumming and rumba, with locals dancing beside visitors.

Antigua offers marimba in the central park, local bands in bars and the occasional concert in a ruined cloister. Its one great spectacle is Holy Week, when processions pass over sawdust carpets, and that is a religious tradition rather than a performance.

Antigua is the more restful place. Its courtyard hotels have fountains and views of the volcanoes, several have real spas offering coffee and cacao treatments, yoga and massage are easy to find, and some places offer a Maya temazcal. Saints'-day fireworks at dawn are the main disturbance.

In Trinidad, wellness amounts to a massage at a resort hotel on Ancon. The slow afternoons in rocking chairs are pleasant, but roosters, horse carts, late music and power cuts that stop the fans mean that rest is easier on the beach or up in the hills.