Atlanta or Gatlinburg?

Neither place is a beach destination, and both are hours from the sea. What differs is the water. Atlanta's reservoirs, Lake Lanier and Lake Allatoona, have sandy swimming areas and warm water in summer, good for a lazy lake day.

Gatlinburg's version is tubing or wading in cold, clear mountain rivers such as the Little River near Townsend. It is more bracing, and riskier after rain.

Atlanta is far the better place to eat. Southern cooking here is a serious tradition, from meat-and-three cafeterias and west side soul food kitchens to Sunday brunch. Buford Highway adds a long run of Korean, Vietnamese, Mexican and Ethiopian restaurants that cook for their own communities.

Gatlinburg feeds a resort crowd, with pancake houses, barbecue and family restaurants on the Parkway, and fudge and moonshine as the local treats. Good Appalachian trout and country ham exist but are scattered, and keen eaters drive out to Knoxville or Asheville.

The real sights are in Atlanta. Its civil rights heritage, centred on King's birth home and Ebenezer Baptist Church on Auburn Avenue, carries national weight. The High Museum, the Atlanta History Center and the Carter Presidential Library fill out two or three days.

Gatlinburg itself is a strip of attractions with no serious museums. Its heritage lies in the working studios of the Arts and Crafts Community and in the old log cabins, mills and churches at Cades Cove and along the Roaring Fork. Those are trips out into the park rather than sightseeing in town.

After dark the two have little in common. Atlanta is home to much of Southern hip-hop and trap and has big clubs, with dive bars on Edgewood Avenue, one of the South's largest LGBTQ scenes in Midtown and bottle-service lounges in Buckhead. Each area is separate, though, and you need a ride to get between them.

In Gatlinburg an evening means a stroll along the lit Parkway, a moonshine tasting and perhaps a pub terrace, and by late night the strip is empty. Many visitors end the day in a cabin hot tub instead.

Gatlinburg wins clearly here. Its streets end at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, so deep forest, waterfall walks, the climb up Mount LeConte and the road to Clingmans Dome are all minutes away, with black bears, deer and elk along the way.

Atlanta is green for a large city, with its tall tree canopy, Piedmont Park, the BeltLine trail, Stone Mountain and the Chattahoochee. For the Blue Ridge and the Appalachian Trail, though, you drive about two hours north, into the kind of mountain country Gatlinburg has on its doorstep.

The two are about even for day trips, but the outings are different in kind. From Atlanta you get gentle small-town Georgia: the college town of Athens, gold-rush Dahlonega among the vineyards, pre-Civil War Madison, and Chattanooga's aquarium and Lookout Mountain.

From Gatlinburg the destinations are better known: Asheville with the Biltmore Estate, and Cherokee across Newfound Gap with its museum of the Eastern Band. Knoxville and Pigeon Forge are also close. Both bases need a car, and the options run out quickly beyond these.

Gatlinburg is built around children in a way Atlanta is not. The Parkway is a run of mirror mazes, mini golf, alpine coasters and treetop parks reached by chairlift, and Dollywood is a short drive away. The national park adds creek wading, junior ranger badges and bears seen from the car, and large shared cabins with games rooms suit several families travelling together.

Atlanta has excellent individual attractions, notably the Georgia Aquarium with its whale sharks, Zoo Atlanta's gorillas, Fernbank's dinosaurs and the Center for Puppetry Arts. They are spread out, though, and heavy traffic lies between them.

Neither works well without a car, but they fall short in different ways. Atlanta's MARTA rail line links the airport, downtown, Midtown and Buckhead, which covers the main museums and Piedmont Park. For restaurants, Stone Mountain and everything else you drive across a sprawling metro area.

Gatlinburg is small. The Parkway strip is easy to walk and a trolley loops out to Pigeon Forge. Most cabins, however, sit up steep hillside roads, the park needs a car, and traffic stalls for long stretches on busy weekends and in October.

Atlanta has more to offer, though mostly in malls. The two big malls facing each other on Peachtree Road in Buckhead, plus the boutiques of Buckhead Village, cover luxury labels and department stores, and Little Five Points adds vintage clothes and records.

Gatlinburg has no fashion, and the Parkway sells souvenirs and sweets. Its one real strength is handmade goods: quilts, pottery, brooms and woodwork bought from the makers in the Arts and Crafts Community, which Atlanta has nothing to match.

Gatlinburg comes out a little cheaper. A big cabin shared by a group, or an older motel midweek or in winter, keeps the cost of a bed down, and the national park costs little to enjoy. Its paid attractions and Dollywood are expensive, though, and rates jump in October and over Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Atlanta's hotels cost less than those on either coast, and Buford Highway is good value. Car hire, parking and tickets for the big attractions add up, which the free civil rights sites only partly offset.

Atlanta has a full cultural calendar: the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra at the Woodruff Arts Center, the Alliance Theatre, seasons of opera and ballet, and Broadway tours at the Fox. Major hip-hop, R&B and gospel tours play its arenas, with the Tabernacle and smaller rooms in Little Five Points below them.

Gatlinburg's live entertainment is the family show: dinner theatres, country and gospel revues and magic in Pigeon Forge, and bluegrass in the moonshine tasting rooms. The mountain music is genuine, but there is no orchestra or serious theatre.

Atlanta does its relaxing indoors and Gatlinburg does it outdoors. Atlanta's best answer is its big Korean bathhouses in the northeastern suburbs, about half an hour out, with hot and cold pools, sauna rooms and long lounging halls, some open round the clock. Hotel spas in Buckhead and Midtown cover massages.

Gatlinburg has no bathing culture and only a few resort spas, so the calm comes from the setting: a secluded hillside cabin with a deck, a rocking chair and mist settling on the ridges. Stay up there rather than down on the crowded Parkway, with its traffic and amusement noise.