Atlanta or Rehoboth Beach?

This is Rehoboth's whole reason for being. The town has a wide strip of sand in front of the boardwalk, with lifeguards and moderate surf, and wilder stretches at Cape Henlopen and Delaware Seashore State Park. In high summer you can swim from your rental house before lunch.

Atlanta sits on an inland plateau, and both coasts are at least four hours' drive away. The warm reservoir water at Lake Lanier and Lake Allatoona makes a good weekend lake day, but it is not a beach trip.

Atlanta gives you far more to eat. It has the full Southern table, from meat-and-three cafeterias and west-side soul food to smoked barbecue and a serious Sunday brunch. Then there is Buford Highway, where Korean, Vietnamese, Mexican and Ethiopian kitchens cook for their own communities. The catch is that you need a car to reach much of it.

Rehoboth eats well for a resort, with chef-led restaurants along Rehoboth Avenue, steamed blue crabs, raw bars and good craft beer. But the choice narrows to pizza and boardwalk snacks at the cheap end, and much of it closes down out of season.

There is no real contest here. Atlanta has little old townscape after 1864, but its civil rights heritage is of national weight: the King park on Auburn Avenue and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. Add the High Museum, the Atlanta History Center and the Carter Library and you have two or three full days of sightseeing.

Rehoboth has its camp-meeting cottages, the Art League's garden galleries in Henlopen Acres and a small museum house. Visitors who want history usually drive over to Lewes or the wartime towers at Cape Henlopen.

Atlanta's nights are bigger and run later. They range from clubs playing the hip-hop and trap the city exports, through the dive bars of Edgewood Avenue, to bottle-service lounges in Buckhead. Each area is its own pocket, though, so you take a ride between them rather than walking from bar to bar.

Both places have a strong LGBTQ scene. Atlanta's is centred on Midtown, while Rehoboth's piano lounges and drag nights around Baltimore Avenue are small enough to walk between. Dewey Beach adds loud outdoor deck bars in summer, but Rehoboth has few true clubs, and outside the season it goes quiet.

Atlanta has more variety and more height. In town there is a heavy tree canopy, Piedmont Park and the BeltLine. Within half an hour you can climb the granite dome of Stone Mountain, and within about two hours you reach the Blue Ridge foothills, Amicalola Falls and the southern end of the Appalachian Trail.

Rehoboth's outdoors is flat and coastal: the tall dunes of Cape Henlopen, salt marsh, and a cycle trail through the wetlands to Lewes. The inland bays are good for kayaking and paddleboarding, dolphins often pass offshore and the Assateague ponies are within an hour. It is gentle rather than dramatic.

Neither has a famous destination close by, and both need a car, but the trips feel different. From Atlanta you head inland to college-town Athens, the gold-rush square at Dahlonega and the North Georgia vineyards, or about two hours north to Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain.

Rehoboth's outings follow the coast. Lewes is only ten minutes away, and from there the ferry crosses Delaware Bay to the Victorian streets of Cape May. Ocean City's bigger boardwalk and Chincoteague lie to the south.

Both work well with children, in different ways. Atlanta offers big headline attractions: whale sharks at the Georgia Aquarium, gorillas at the zoo, dinosaurs at Fernbank, Six Flags roller coasters and the puppetry centre. Each of these means a drive through heavy traffic.

Rehoboth is simpler and closer to hand, with Funland's gentle rides, lifeguarded beaches steps from the rental houses and calm bay water at Cape Henlopen. It is very much a summer place, though, and there is little for children out of season.

Rehoboth is easier to get around once you are there. Downtown, the boardwalk and the beach are a short flat walk apart, bikes are everywhere, and a seasonal trolley runs to Dewey Beach. Arriving is the hard part: there is no train, and the highway clogs on summer weekends.

In Atlanta the MARTA line covers the airport, downtown, Midtown and Buckhead, and the Eastside Trail links a few walkable neighbourhoods. Almost everything else, including the best food streets, sits across a sprawling metro area where a car is needed and rush-hour traffic is notorious.

Neither city is worth the trip for shopping alone, and they suit different shoppers. Atlanta does mainstream American retail on a large scale. Buckhead's big malls and the streets around them cover department stores and designer names, and Little Five Points offers secondhand clothes and vinyl. What Atlanta lacks is anything you could only buy there, because there is no local craft and no old market quarter to browse.

In Rehoboth you shop for bargains more than labels. Delaware has no sales tax, which makes the outlets on the highway worth a proper stop for discounted brands. Downtown, the independent clothes shops, bookshops and galleries sell relaxed resort wear and gifts. You will find nothing dressy there.

Atlanta is the gentler on the budget. Hotel rooms cost less than in the coastal cities, Buford Highway and the Southern diners are fair value, and the King sites are free, though car hire and the big attractions add up.

Rehoboth in high summer charges resort premiums for beachside rooms, meals and parking. The beach costs nothing, tax-free shopping helps, and spring or autumn stays are far cheaper.

Atlanta has a full performing arts calendar. The Atlanta Symphony and the Alliance Theatre share the Woodruff Arts Center, the opera and ballet run full seasons, and the Fox Theatre takes touring Broadway shows. On the popular side, major hip-hop and R&B tours fill the arenas, with the Tabernacle and smaller rooms below them.

Rehoboth's offering is summer-scale: free bandstand concerts, a small theatre company staging musicals and cabaret, an autumn film festival and piano acts in the bars.

The two cities offer opposite kinds of rest. Atlanta's best option is an urban one: a long day of soaking, sweating and dozing in one of the Korean bathhouses out in the northeastern suburbs, with the hotel spas of Buckhead and Midtown for a massage. You have to drive out to the bathhouses, though, and the city around them rarely feels calm.

Rehoboth has little in the way of treatments beyond a handful of spas and yoga classes, so you relax in the setting itself. Come in June, September or on an autumn weekend and you get a quiet boardwalk and empty cycle paths under the pines. In July and August the crowds take most of that calm away.