Asheville or Nashville?

Neither city is a beach destination, so the difference lies in the kind of water. Asheville's swimming is cold and wild: pools under waterfalls in Pisgah, the natural rock slide at Sliding Rock, tubing on the French Broad and a small sandy beach at Lake Lure. Nashville's reservoirs, Percy Priest and Old Hickory, stay warm through the summer and suit a lazy afternoon on a pontoon boat better than a bracing plunge.

These are two Southern kitchens of similar strength, pulling in different directions. Asheville's pride is its beer, with dozens of taprooms across downtown, the South Slope and West Asheville, and cooking built on Appalachian farm produce such as trout, ramps and heirloom corn.

Nashville answers with hot chicken, meat-and-three cafeterias and Tennessee whiskey. It also has the wider international reach, thanks to the Kurdish, Mexican and Vietnamese places along Nolensville Pike. Go to Asheville for beer and farm cooking, and to Nashville for its signature dishes and a little more variety.

The two have different kinds of sight. Asheville's are architectural and historic. The Biltmore Estate fills a whole day, and downtown has a rare run of Art Deco and Beaux-Arts buildings around City Hall, the Grove Arcade and the Basilica of St Lawrence.

Nashville's sights are almost all about music, led by the Country Music Hall of Fame, the National Museum of African American Music and a daytime tour of the Ryman, while the Parthenon replica and the Frist add some art. Each takes two or three days. Asheville is the better choice for old buildings, and Nashville is better if the history of a sound draws you.

Nashville offers by far the bigger night out. Lower Broadway's multi-storey honky-tonks have a band on every floor and a crowd that stays until the small hours, and the hen and stag groups give weekends a party feel. East Nashville and Midtown are calmer alternatives.

Asheville's evenings are gentler. Taprooms, cocktail bars and dives downtown, on the South Slope and along Haywood Road fill with a relaxed mix of locals and visitors, and most close around midnight. It is a good town for a few beers with friends but not for a night that keeps going.

This is where Asheville pulls well ahead. The Blue Ridge Parkway, Pisgah National Forest and the Great Smoky Mountains put real mountain country within an hour, with ridge walks over grassy balds, waterfall trails, serious mountain biking and whitewater on the Nantahala and Pigeon rivers.

Nashville's outdoors are gentler and closer to home: easy trails at Radnor Lake and the Warner Parks, greenways along the Cumberland, a canoe trip on the Harpeth and cycling on the Natchez Trace Parkway. They make a pleasant morning, but few people plan a trip around them the way hikers plan one around Asheville.

Neither city has a major destination within easy reach, and their outings have a different flavour. From Asheville most trips go into the landscape: Brevard's waterfall country, small towns such as Hendersonville and Black Mountain, and Cherokee, which gives the deepest look at the region's original people. From Nashville the themes are Civil War history and whiskey, with Franklin's preserved Main Street and battlefields, Stones River at Murfreesboro and the distilleries around Lynchburg, and Chattanooga at the far edge of a long day.

Families do about equally well in either city, but the days look different. Asheville suits active children, with black bears and red wolves at the Nature Center, Sliding Rock, river tubing, zip lines and the farmyard at Biltmore. Nashville has the town attractions Asheville lacks: a good zoo, the Adventure Science Center with its planetarium and a summer water park, though Lower Broadway is no place for children in the evening.

Both work the same way, with a compact downtown you can walk and a car for nearly everything else. The difference is the kind of driving. In Asheville it means slow, winding mountain roads that clog on October weekends. In Nashville it means interstates that jam at rush hour, and ride-hailing is the more practical way between neighbourhoods such as East Nashville and 12 South.

Asheville is the better place to shop if you want something handmade. Pottery, glass, weaving and woodwork come straight from the River Arts District studios, the downtown galleries and the craft guild's showcase at the Folk Art Center, and there are independent shops in the Grove Arcade.

Nashville's offer is narrower: cowboy boots, rhinestone shirts, guitars and letterpress concert posters, plus boutiques and record shops in 12 South and East Nashville. Neither city has much in the way of luxury brands in the centre.

Neither city is cheap, but Asheville costs a little less. Its inns are pricey, especially on leaf-season weekends, and the Biltmore ticket and a hire car add up. The trails, the waterfalls and the Parkway, though, cost nothing.

Nashville's downtown hotels are dearer still, especially when groups arrive at weekends, and ride-hailing across a spread-out city soon mounts up. What saves money there is the free music on Broadway and cheap meals at meat-and-three cafeterias and hot chicken counters.

Music is the reason most people visit Nashville, and here it leads by a long way. Alongside the Grand Ole Opry and the Ryman are intimate songwriter nights and bluegrass and Americana rooms. The symphony plays in the Schermerhorn, and ballet and opera are staged at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.

Asheville's music is rootsier and smaller in scale: bluegrass and old-time jams, buskers, a few venues for touring bands, and free evenings of fiddle music and clogging at Shindig on the Green. It makes a lovely extra on a mountain trip, but the concert halls and theatres are modest.

Rest comes easily in Asheville because the setting does most of the work. The evenings are cool, the town moves at an unhurried pace, and a slow day can be nothing more than a gentle drive along the Parkway or an afternoon beside a mountain creek. Calm is the ordinary mood of the place, not something you have to book.

In Nashville a restful stay takes deliberate effort. Downtown runs on noise and late nights, so anyone after quiet should stay in the leafy streets of Belmont or Hillsboro, or south of the city, where porch-front cafés and quiet parks set a gentler rhythm. A massage there means a hotel or day spa, a treat to fit between shows rather than a reason to come.