Asheville or Fort Lauderdale?

This is the widest gap between the two. Asheville is hours from any sea, and swimming there means cold mountain water: waterfall pools in Pisgah, the rock chute at Sliding Rock, tubing on the French Broad and a small sandy shore at Lake Lure. That makes a nice summer afternoon, not a beach trip.

Fort Lauderdale is built around its beach. A long strip of pale sand runs along the barrier island, the Atlantic is warm all year, and at Lauderdale-by-the-Sea you can snorkel a reef straight from the shore. Pompano is quieter and Hollywood's Broadwalk is more local, so you can pick the kind of beach day you want.

Asheville is the better place to eat and drink. Breweries run through downtown, the South Slope and West Asheville, and the kitchens cook from Appalachian farms, with trout, heirloom beans, foraged ramps and serious barbecue and biscuits.

Fort Lauderdale is at its best with simple seafood, such as grouper eaten on a dock along the Intracoastal or stone crab in winter. Its Jamaican, Haitian and Cuban cooking inland gives it more international range than Asheville's mostly Southern menus. For a really memorable dinner, though, most visitors drive down to Miami.

Asheville has far more to fill the days. The Biltmore Estate alone takes a full day, and the 1920s downtown of Art Deco and Beaux-Arts buildings, including the domed City Hall and the Grove Arcade, makes a rewarding walk. The Folk Art Center and Thomas Wolfe's boarding house add a further day or so.

Fort Lauderdale's sights are few and young: the Bonnet House in its subtropical garden, the pioneer Stranahan House on the New River and a modern art museum on Las Olas. One curious day covers them all.

Asheville's evenings are built around beer. Taprooms, cocktail bars and dives sit within a short walk of each other downtown and on the South Slope, with a more local row of bars in West Asheville, and most places go quiet by midnight.

Fort Lauderdale goes later and louder. The beach bars on A1A fill from late afternoon, Himmarshee Street keeps a young crowd out late, and Wilton Manors is one of the country's best-known gay neighbourhoods, with drag shows along Wilton Drive. Miami is close if you want a bigger night.

Asheville is the place for the outdoors. The Blue Ridge Parkway, Pisgah National Forest and the Great Smoky Mountains surround it, with waterfall walks, ridge hikes over grassy balds, some of the country's best mountain biking, and whitewater on the Nantahala and the Pigeon. Mount Mitchell, the highest peak in the eastern United States, is about an hour's drive away.

Fort Lauderdale's outdoors is flat and wet. You can kayak the canals and the Intracoastal, dive the reefs and wrecks offshore, fish for sailfish, or take an airboat into the Everglades less than an hour west. It is very good for divers and anglers but has little for walkers.

From Asheville, most outings go into the landscape or to small towns: Hendersonville and the Carl Sandburg Home, Brevard's waterfall country, and Cherokee, with its museum of the region's original people. Greenville is the only sizeable city within an hour.

Fort Lauderdale has the better day trips, mainly because Miami is under an hour away by car or fast train, with South Beach's Art Deco, the murals of Wynwood and Little Havana. Palm Beach and the Flagler Museum lie to the north, and Key Largo is at the far edge of a day.

Asheville suits active children. They can see black bears and red wolves at the Nature Center, ride Sliding Rock, go tubing on the river, try the zip lines and visit the Biltmore farmyard. There is no zoo, aquarium or theme park, though, and families spend a lot of time in the car.

Fort Lauderdale is easier, especially with younger children. Gentle, warm water on a lifeguarded beach fills most days, the Museum of Discovery and Science has a hands-on aquarium section, and an airboat ride to see alligators rarely fails. The main drawback is the summer heat and storms.

In both places you need a car once you leave the centre, but the centres work differently. Asheville's downtown is compact and hilly and easy to walk. Biltmore, the Parkway and the trailheads, however, lie along slow, winding mountain roads, and the buses barely help.

Fort Lauderdale's walkable stretch of beach, Las Olas and the New River is linked by water taxis and free trolleys. Trains run from downtown to Miami and the Palm Beaches, something Asheville has no equivalent for. Beyond those areas you face wide, hot roads and slow buses.

Neither is a great shopping city, and they sell very different things. Asheville is the place for handmade work: pottery, glass and weaving in the River Arts District studios, the craft guild's showcase at the Folk Art Center, and independent shops around the Grove Arcade and Lexington Avenue.

Fort Lauderdale is about resort fashion on Las Olas and brand bargains at the huge outlet mall in Sunrise, with few local crafts.

Both are expensive by American standards, and both get noticeably cheaper out of season. Asheville is dearest on October weekends, when the leaves turn, and Biltmore admission and a hire car add to the bill. The trails, waterfalls and Parkway cost nothing.

Fort Lauderdale is dearest in winter and over spring weekends and school breaks, and beach-bar cocktails and parking add up quickly. The hot summer brings the lowest room rates. The beach is free, and staying in a self-catering apartment a few blocks back from the sand is the usual way to save.

Asheville has the richer live music, rooted in Appalachian tradition. You will find bluegrass and old-time jams in pubs, buskers downtown, free evenings of fiddle music and clogging at Shindig on the Green, and a folk festival that has run since 1928. Its symphony and theatres are modest.

Fort Lauderdale's strength is the formal stage. The Broward Center brings touring Broadway musicals, ballet and comedy. Beyond that there is little homegrown music besides cover bands in the beach bars, and for serious classical music you go to Miami.

Asheville has been a place to rest since nineteenth-century visitors came to recover in its mountain air. Today it has retreats, yoga studios and large spas in the hillside resort hotels, and riverside mineral-water tubs at Hot Springs, about forty minutes away. Cool evenings and quiet inn porches complete the picture.

Fort Lauderdale offers resort spas and sunrise yoga on the sand, the same as any American beach town. Its real appeal for rest is the warm, dry winter weather and slow walks along the promenade.