Asheville or Boca Raton?

There is no real contest. Asheville is hours from any sea. Swimming there means cold waterfall pools in Pisgah, the natural slide at Sliding Rock, tubing on the French Broad or the small sandy shore at Lake Lure, all good for a hot summer afternoon and not much more.

Boca Raton has a proper ocean front, with soft pale sand in low-rise beach parks, snorkelling straight off the beach at Red Reef Park and an Atlantic you can swim in all year. The mood is quiet and family-minded, and livelier beaches are a short drive along the coast.

Asheville is the better place to eat and drink. Its breweries across downtown, the South Slope and West Asheville are a reason to visit in themselves. The kitchens cook from Appalachian farms, serving trout, ramps, heirloom corn, barbecue and biscuits, and the farmers' markets show where it all comes from.

Boca Raton is comfortable rather than memorable: steakhouses, Italian dining rooms, sushi and waterfront seafood in Mizner Park and the plazas, with stone crab, Key lime pie and a strong deli and bagel tradition as its own touches. The range is a little wider than Asheville's, but much of it follows a familiar formula, while Asheville's food has a real sense of place.

Asheville has more to see. The Biltmore Estate alone fills a day. Downtown keeps one of the South's most intact sets of Art Deco and Beaux-Arts buildings, from the domed City Hall to the Grove Arcade, and beyond them are the Folk Art Center and the boarding house where Thomas Wolfe grew up.

Boca Raton's character also comes from the 1920s, in Addison Mizner's Mediterranean Revival stucco and arcades, but it has fewer sights. There is the history museum in the Old Town Hall, the art museum in Mizner Park and the Morikami gardens just north. A day covers them, and a serious culture trip means heading to Palm Beach or Miami.

Neither suits a long night out, but Asheville has more going on. Taprooms, cocktail bars and dives sit within walking distance of each other downtown and on the South Slope, Haywood Road has a looser local strip, and the summer drum circle in Pritchard Park draws a crowd. Boca Raton's evenings mean dinner with wine or cocktails around Mizner Park and a quiet city by midnight. For anything louder you go to Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach or drive to Fort Lauderdale.

Asheville is built for the outdoors. The Blue Ridge Parkway, Pisgah National Forest and the Great Smoky Mountains are all within about an hour. They offer waterfall walks, ridge hikes over grassy balds, some of the country's best mountain biking and whitewater rafting, in wooded mountains that change completely from spring bloom to October colour.

Boca Raton's outdoors is flat and mostly on the water. You can paddle the mangroves of the Intracoastal, snorkel and dive the nearshore reef, fish for sailfish in the Gulf Stream and see alligators at the Loxahatchee refuge. It is pleasant, but it fills a few mornings rather than a whole trip.

Boca Raton has more places within reach, because it sits between real cities. Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami are all within about an hour, with the Flagler Museum, Las Olas, South Beach and Vizcaya, and Miami can be reached by train.

From Asheville the outings are mostly into the mountains and to small towns: Hendersonville, Black Mountain, Brevard's waterfall country and Cherokee, which gives the deepest look at the region's original people. Greenville is the one sizeable city. The scenery changes more on these drives, whereas Boca's outings all follow the same coastal strip.

Boca Raton is the slightly easier choice with children. It has lifeguarded beaches with shade, a shallow reef for a first snorkel, the sea turtles at Gumbo Limbo, a children's science museum and Sugar Sand Park. Winter and spring are the most comfortable seasons.

Asheville suits active families best. Children can see black bears and red wolves at the nature centre, then try short waterfall hikes, river tubing, Sliding Rock, zip lines and the Biltmore farmyard. In both places the big theme parks are long drives, Dollywood from Asheville and Lion Country Safari from Boca.

Both expect you to drive, but Asheville is the easier of the two. Its downtown is compact and walkable, if hilly, with the South Slope and River Arts District close by. Biltmore, the Parkway and the trailheads still need a car on slow, winding roads.

Boca Raton spreads along wide multi-lane roads with weak bus services, so most visitors use a hire car or ride-hailing. Its one advantage is rail: Tri-Rail and Brightline trains make car-free days in Fort Lauderdale and Miami practical.

The two are close, but they sell very different things. Boca Raton is the place for brands. It has an upscale enclosed mall full of department stores and designer labels, open-air boutiques in Mizner Park and Royal Palm Place, and Worth Avenue up the coast.

Asheville has almost no luxury brands. Its strength is handmade work, with pottery, glass, weaving and woodwork in the River Arts District studios and at the Folk Art Center. The streets around the Grove Arcade add independent bookshops and vintage clothing.

Neither is cheap, but Asheville is gentler on the wallet. Its inns and hotels are expensive and jump on autumn weekends, and Biltmore admission and a hire car add up. The trails, waterfalls and Parkway are free, though, and midweek or winter stays ease the bill.

In winter, Boca Raton's room rates rival those of major international cities. Restaurants are priced for a wealthy local crowd, and visitors pay to park at the beaches. Summer rooms are much cheaper if you can live with the heat and storms.

Asheville has the deeper music life. Downtown and riverside venues bring touring Americana, rock and indie acts most nights. The Appalachian tradition runs through bluegrass jams, street buskers, the free fiddle evenings of Shindig on the Green and a folk festival that dates back to 1928.

Boca Raton's programme is more formal and mostly a winter affair: open-air concerts at the Mizner Park Amphitheater, Broadway-style musicals, recitals from Lynn University's conservatory and a local ballet. Neither city has much for opera or major orchestras, and Boca residents go to West Palm Beach or Miami for those.

Asheville has the longer tradition of rest. It began as a nineteenth-century mountain health retreat, and that legacy lives on in its yoga studios, retreats and alternative therapies. It also has spas at the hillside resort hotels and mineral-water tubs by the river at Hot Springs, about forty minutes away.

Boca Raton offers a different kind of calm: the resort pool, a massage and an early night. Its spas and yoga studios are polished, but there are no springs or public baths, so it suits switching off in the warmth more than travelling for spa culture.