Atlanta or Chicago?

Neither city is a beach destination, but only Chicago has sand inside the city. Its Lake Michigan beaches run from Oak Street, right beside the Gold Coast towers, to the volleyball crowd at North Avenue. They make an easy summer afternoon between sights, and the fresh water is warm enough to swim from late June to early September.

Atlanta has no coast within a day's reach. Swimming means an hour's drive to the sandy swimming areas of Lake Lanier or Allatoona, or a hotel pool. Lake Lanier is warmer than Lake Michigan, but it is a weekend outing for local families rather than part of a city stay.

Both cities have a cooking style of their own, and Chicago's goes further. It runs from Italian beef and tavern-cut pizza up to the tasting-menu kitchens of Randolph Street. Pilsen has Mexican cooking and Devon Avenue has South Asian food, and much of it is reachable by train.

Atlanta's strength is Southern food in its own setting: meat-and-three cafeterias, soul food kitchens on the west side and a serious Sunday brunch. The strip malls of Buford Highway match Chicago's immigrant neighbourhoods for honest cooking, but you drive between meals there rather than walking a neighbourhood.

Chicago has far more to see. The Loop is a textbook of skyscraper history, best seen from the river. The Art Institute's Impressionists alone fill a morning, and the Museum Campus and Wright's houses in Hyde Park and Oak Park add several more days.

Atlanta has less to see, but it has something Chicago cannot match. Martin Luther King's birth home, Ebenezer Baptist Church and the civil rights centre downtown make it the place to understand that movement. Add the High Museum and the Fox Theatre, and two or three days cover the rest.

Atlanta's nights revolve around its clubs. The big rooms play the hip-hop and trap the city sends out to the rest of the country, Buckhead has the dressier bottle-service lounges, Edgewood Avenue packs dive bars and small dance floors into a few blocks, and Midtown has one of the South's largest LGBTQ scenes. Each is a separate pocket, though, so an evening usually means picking one area and taking a ride there.

Chicago gives the longer and more varied night out. Late licences keep many bars pouring into the small hours, long after most cities have called last orders. The choice runs from cocktail and dive bars in Wicker Park and Logan Square to River North's dance clubs, the sports crowd around Wrigley Field and the gay district of Northalsted. As one of the places where house music began, the city still has dance nights that carry on that tradition.

Atlanta has the better outdoors, largely because it has hills. Stone Mountain's granite dome and the Kennesaw battlefield trails are half an hour away, and the Chattahoochee is there for paddling. Amicalola Falls and the Appalachian Trail are about two hours north by car.

Chicago's landscape is the lake. A shore path of about 29km is made for walking and cycling, and Lincoln and Jackson Parks are good for birding on the migration route. The Indiana Dunes are an hour away, but the land around the city is flat.

Neither city has a famous outing on its doorstep, but Atlanta's are more varied if you have a car. There is the college town of Athens, Dahlonega's gold-rush square among the vineyards, Madison's pre-Civil War houses, and Chattanooga's riverfront and Lookout Mountain about two hours away.

Chicago's best escape needs no car: Milwaukee is an easy train ride away, and Oak Park sits on the city's edge. Beyond those, it is a drive across flat prairie to Lake Geneva or the harbour towns of Michigan.

Both cities are good with children, and Chicago edges ahead by keeping it all close together. The Field Museum's dinosaurs, the Shedd's belugas and the planetarium share one lakefront campus, the Museum of Science and Industry can fill a day, and Lincoln Park Zoo is free.

Atlanta's big attractions are just as strong: the whale sharks at the Georgia Aquarium, the gorillas at Zoo Atlanta, the Center for Puppetry Arts, and Six Flags for older children. The catch is the driving between them and the humid summers, which make the days long.

This is the widest gap between the two. In Chicago you can do without a car: the L runs from both airports into the Loop, and the main sights from Millennium Park to the Museum Campus are a flat walk apart. Buses cover the trips between neighbourhoods.

Atlanta works without a car only along the MARTA line, which runs from the airport through downtown and Midtown to Buckhead, and on the BeltLine trail. The best restaurants, Stone Mountain and everything out of town need a car, and rush-hour traffic is heavy.

Chicago is the better shopping city because it has a shopping street, not just malls. The flagships of the Magnificent Mile, the luxury labels on Oak Street and the old Marshall Field's under its Tiffany ceiling make a good afternoon on foot, and Wicker Park and Andersonville add independent shops.

Atlanta's best shopping is concentrated in the two Buckhead malls on Peachtree Road, with Little Five Points for vintage clothes and records. Neither city has much in the way of markets or local crafts.

Atlanta is the somewhat cheaper stay. The saving is mainly in hotel rooms, which cost noticeably less away from Buckhead, and in casual Southern and Buford Highway cooking. The King sites are free. Car hire, parking and steep entry charges at the big family attractions win some of that back.

Chicago's downtown hotels and sit-down meals are expensive, and the taxes are high. Against that, you can manage without a car, and the lakefront, the beaches and Lincoln Park Zoo are free. Taquerias and hot dog stands keep casual eating cheap.

Chicago is one of the best cities in the country for a night at a show. It has a world-class symphony, the Lyric Opera, Steppenwolf and the Goodman alongside dozens of storefront theatres, improv at Second City, and electric blues and late jazz sets. Summer adds free concerts at the Pritzker Pavilion.

Atlanta has a solid classical base, with a symphony known for its choral recordings, the Alliance Theatre and touring shows at the Fox. Its real strength is popular music, with hip-hop, R&B and gospel tours filling the arenas and the Tabernacle.

Neither city is a place to slow down, and in both the best answer is bathing. Atlanta's large Korean bathhouses in the northeastern suburbs, some open round the clock, are the bigger draw, though they are half an hour out by car. Chicago has its own jjimjilbang in the suburbs, plus a Russian-and-Turkish bathhouse in Wicker Park that has run since the early 1900s.

The quiet moments are different: leafy streets and shaded porches in Atlanta, early walks by the lake and the warm conservatory glasshouses through a Chicago winter.