Asheville or Detroit?

Neither city is a beach destination, but Detroit at least has lake swimming in high summer. There is the small beach on Belle Isle, and the long, shallow shore at Lake St. Clair Metropark warms enough in July and August for a comfortable dip.

In Asheville you swim in mountain water. The waterfall pools in Pisgah, the rock slide at Sliding Rock, tubing on the French Broad and the little beach at Lake Lure are fun on a hot day, but the water stays cool and none of it adds up to a beach day.

The two eat well in quite different ways. Asheville's cooking is Appalachian and Southern: trout, heirloom beans, ramps, barbecue and biscuits. Beer from the dozens of breweries downtown and on the South Slope is the main event, with cider and mead on the side.

Detroit's strengths are its own street food and its immigrant neighbourhoods. There are Coney dogs, thick square pizza and Saturdays at Eastern Market, Lebanese and Yemeni cooking in Dearborn, Mexicantown and the Polish bakeries of Hamtramck. Asheville is the place for a farm-to-table dinner, while Detroit has far more international food, though its best meals are often a drive away.

Detroit has more to see. The Detroit Institute of Arts alone, with Rivera's Detroit Industry murals, goes beyond anything in Asheville's museums. The Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village, the Motown Museum and the Charles H. Wright Museum add several full days on industry, music and African American history.

Asheville has the Biltmore Estate, a single great day, and a compact Art Deco downtown with the domed City Hall and the Grove Arcade. Both cities have fine early twentieth-century buildings, but Asheville's are easier to walk between, and its sights run out after two or three days.

Detroit offers more of a night out, including something Asheville lacks entirely: techno, which was born here. There are warehouse parties, small serious clubs and after-hours events, plus cocktail bars and dives in Corktown and Midtown. The drawback is that the scene is spread out, so getting between neighbourhoods means taxis.

Asheville's evenings are gentler and the bars sit closer together: taprooms, cocktail bars and dives a short walk apart downtown and on the South Slope, with Haywood Road in West Asheville for a local crowd. It suits a few relaxed beers, but few places stay open much past midnight.

This is where Asheville is far ahead. It sits among the Southern Appalachians, with the Blue Ridge Parkway at its edge and Pisgah National Forest just south. Mount Mitchell and the Great Smokies are about an hour away, and trails, mountain biking and whitewater rafting are close by.

Detroit is flat, and its outdoors means rivers and parks: Belle Isle, the RiverWalk, kayaking and sailing on Lake St. Clair, and wetland trails in the metroparks. These make a pleasant afternoon but are not a reason to travel, and the long, cold winters shorten the season.

Neither city has a major destination within reach. Asheville's outings come out slightly ahead because the landscape itself is the attraction: the waterfall country around Brevard, the Cherokee museum and Oconaluftee village, Carl Sandburg's home at Flat Rock and the autumn orchards.

From Detroit the choices are towns and single attractions. Ann Arbor has its campus and museums, Frankenmuth is a Bavarian-themed town, Toledo has its art museum, Windsor in Canada is across the river, and Cedar Point's roller coasters are at the far edge of a day out. From both cities you will be driving.

Families do about equally well, but in different ways. Asheville suits active children, with tubing, Sliding Rock, zip lines, short waterfall hikes, the bears and red wolves at the Nature Center and the farmyard at Biltmore.

Detroit has the bigger set pieces: a large zoo with a polar bear tunnel, the hands-on Michigan Science Center, the small aquarium on Belle Isle and the steam trains of Greenfield Village. Several of these also work on cold or wet days. In both cities you spend plenty of time driving between sights.

Both cities leave most visitors needing a car, so the difference is in what you can do without one. Detroit has a little rail: the People Mover loops round downtown and the QLine streetcar runs up Woodward to the museums of Midtown and New Center. A stay built around museums and concerts can manage without a car.

Asheville's walkable centre is smaller and hillier. Its main sights, the Biltmore, the Parkway and the trailheads, lie outside it on slow, winding mountain roads that get crowded on October weekends.

Asheville is the better place to shop, as long as you want handmade things. There is pottery, glass, weaving and woodwork in the River Arts District studios and the downtown galleries, the craft guild's Folk Art Center, and independent boutiques in the Grove Arcade and around Lexington Avenue.

Detroit has less, and it is more scattered: Detroit-made watches, leather and prints in Midtown and Corktown, market-day stalls at Eastern Market, and a suburban mall for the big brands. Neither has a central shopping street full of big brands or luxury labels.

Detroit is the cheaper place to stay. Outside event nights its hotels cost less than in most big American cities, and Coney dogs, pizza and Dearborn's Middle Eastern food are good value.

Asheville is priced as a popular weekend escape, with expensive inns and steep autumn weekends, and the Biltmore is a costly day out. On the plus side, the trails, waterfalls and Parkway cost nothing, and midweek or winter stays are easier on the budget. In both cities, tips and a hire car add to the cost.

Detroit has far more on stage. Its symphony plays in Orchestra Hall, the Detroit Opera performs in a restored opera house, and the Fox and Fisher theatres host big concerts and touring Broadway. Jazz clubs and the free Labor Day jazz festival sit alongside the city's Motown, soul and gospel tradition.

Asheville's music is smaller and more rooted in the region. There are bluegrass and old-time jams, street buskers, free fiddle and clogging evenings at Shindig on the Green, and the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, which has run since 1928. Go to Asheville for Appalachian music, not for orchestras or opera.

The gap is wide. Asheville has been a place to rest since the nineteenth century, when people came to its mountain air to recover their health, so you can build a whole stay around unwinding. Neither city has a public bathhouse, but only Asheville has natural mineral water within reach, at Hot Springs beside the French Broad.

In Detroit, a calm afternoon fits in between museums and gigs rather than being the reason for the trip. A hotel spa or a suburban day spa will do for a massage. The quietest hours are by the water, cycling the RiverWalk or wandering the woods and lagoon of Belle Isle with the Windsor skyline across the river.