Asheville or Miami Beach?

Here the two are as far apart as they can be. Miami Beach is built along its beach, a continuous stretch of pale sand on the Atlantic, with a calm, warm sea and a choice of mood from crowded South Beach to quieter North Beach. You can swim there in any month.

Asheville is hours from the coast. Its summer swimming happens at Sliding Rock, in waterfall pools, on tubes down the French Broad or at the small beach on Lake Lure, and the water stays cold even in July. It makes a pleasant half-day, but it is no substitute for a beach vacation.

The two eat about equally well, but the food is very different. Asheville cooks from its Appalachian farms, with trout, heirloom beans, ramps and barbecue, and its many breweries, cider makers and farmers' markets are as much a reason to visit as the restaurants. Look beyond Southern and modern American cooking, though, and the choice soon runs thin.

Miami Beach leans Latin and upscale: Cuban sandwiches and cafecito from takeaway windows, stone crabs in winter, ceviche and arepas, and polished hotel dining rooms. On Ocean Drive the food is mostly for tourists, so it pays to eat on the side streets or cross the causeway to Little Havana.

Both cities have a short list of sights led by striking interwar architecture. Asheville has two main draws, the Biltmore Estate, which fills a whole day, and a downtown of 1920s Art Deco and Beaux-Arts buildings such as City Hall and the Grove Arcade. The Folk Art Center adds the region's craft history.

Miami Beach's Art Deco Historic District is the larger set of buildings and the easier walk, a pastel strip of 1930s hotels along Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue. The Wolfsonian and the Holocaust Memorial complete the list, and the bigger museums are on the mainland.

Miami Beach is the place for a big night out. South Beach has clubs with guest DJs that run until dawn, afternoon pool parties and lobby bars made for being seen, though it comes with dress codes, door policies and high bills.

Asheville's evenings are smaller and friendlier: taprooms on the South Slope, dive bars on Haywood Road in West Asheville and the summer drum circle in Pritchard Park. There are hardly any dance clubs, and most places are quiet by midnight.

Asheville is clearly ahead for the outdoors. It sits among the oldest mountains in the east, with the Blue Ridge Parkway, Mount Mitchell and the Great Smokies within about an hour. The hiking, mountain biking and whitewater rafting are good, and the late-spring blooms and autumn colour change the landscape through the year.

Miami Beach has no hills or trails worth the name. Its outdoor life is paddleboarding on the bay, snorkelling on offshore reefs and wrecks, and trips out to the Everglades and Biscayne National Park. These are good for a morning, but they cannot match a mountain range on the doorstep.

There is about as much to do on excursions from either city, but the trips are very different. From Asheville they go into the mountains: Brevard's waterfall country, the Carl Sandburg Home at Flat Rock, and Cherokee's museum and Oconaluftee village, with Greenville's riverside downtown about an hour away.

From Miami Beach most trips head for cities and the coast. Mainland Miami gives you Vizcaya, Little Havana and Coral Gables, Palm Beach is to the north and Key Largo to the south. Both need a car, and Miami's traffic can make the trips feel longer than the map suggests.

Both cities suit families, but different kinds. Asheville is for active children: animal encounters at the Western North Carolina Nature Center, tubing, Sliding Rock, zip lines and the Biltmore farmyard, with plenty of driving in between.

In Miami Beach, children spend most of their time on the sand, in gentle water watched by lifeguards. Families should stay in Mid-Beach or North Beach rather than in party-heavy South Beach, and the zoo and science museum mean a trip to the mainland.

Miami Beach is the easier place to manage without a car. South Beach is flat and compact, free trolleys run up Collins Avenue, and the beachwalk is good for cycling. Leaving the island means causeway traffic or a hire car.

In Asheville only the hilly downtown and the South Slope are comfortable on foot. The Biltmore Estate, the Parkway and every trailhead lie at the end of slow, winding mountain roads that the thin bus network does not reach, so nearly everyone drives.

Miami Beach is the stronger shopping trip, mainly because of Bal Harbour, where the major European fashion and jewellery houses share an open-air mall. Lincoln Road is better for an evening stroll than for finding anything you could not buy at home.

Asheville offers the opposite. It has no luxury labels or department stores. Instead, potters, weavers and glassmakers sell from studios in the River Arts District and galleries downtown, so it is the better place for something handmade in the region.

Neither is cheap, but Asheville is the gentler of the two. Its hotels are expensive on autumn weekends and most visitors pay for a car and Biltmore tickets. Still, the trails, waterfalls and Parkway cost nothing, and a midweek or winter stay brings real savings.

Miami Beach costs more at almost every turn. Oceanfront rooms in winter, resort fees, parking and South Beach cocktails all add up quickly. North Beach hotels, Cuban takeaway windows and the cheap summer season help, and the sand is free.

The two are level here, with very different programmes. Asheville's strength is Appalachian music: bluegrass and old-time jams, buskers downtown, free summer fiddle and clogging evenings at Shindig on the Green, and a folk festival that dates back to 1928.

Miami Beach is the more formal of the two. It has the New World Symphony in its Gehry hall, sometimes projected onto the outside wall for audiences on the lawn, and it is home to Miami City Ballet. Its club music is mostly DJs rather than bands.

Asheville is slightly better for a restful trip. Its history as a mountain health retreat shows in its many yoga studios and therapists, the spas of its hillside resort hotels, and the riverside mineral tubs at Hot Springs. Cool evenings and quiet inn porches do the rest.

Miami Beach offers resort spas with hydrotherapy circuits and sunrise yoga on the sand, but no bathing tradition. A calm stay depends on choosing Mid-Beach or the stretch towards Surfside over loud South Beach.