Atlanta or Virginia Beach?

Virginia Beach is built around the beach. A wide, pale strip runs below the boardwalk, there is surf near the fishing pier, the bay water at First Landing is gentle, and the dunes at Sandbridge are quiet. In high summer the sea is warm enough for long swims.

Atlanta has no coast within a day's reach. The best it can manage is a sandy swimming area at Lake Lanier or Lake Allatoona, which is fine for a hot weekend but no reason to plan a trip.

Atlanta is the far richer place to eat. Meat-and-three cafeterias, west-side soul food and serious Sunday brunch sit alongside the long Buford Highway strip of Korean, Vietnamese, Mexican and Ethiopian kitchens. The BeltLine food halls and chef-led rooms in Inman Park add more, though many of the best meals need a car.

Virginia Beach does one thing well: seafood. Lynnhaven oysters, blue crab and she-crab soup are worth the drive to the dockside places by the inlet. Beyond that, the Oceanfront mostly offers chains and buffets.

Atlanta's sights carry real weight, above all the King birth home and Ebenezer Baptist Church on Auburn Avenue and the civil rights centre downtown. The High Museum, the Atlanta History Center and the Carter library add another couple of days, even if little of the old townscape survived 1864.

Virginia Beach can show you the Cape Henry landing site, the 18th-century lighthouse and the Thoroughgood House in an afternoon. Its real history lies up the peninsula, outside the city.

Atlanta's nights have more range and more of a reputation. There are big clubs playing the hip-hop and trap the city exports, packed dive bars on Edgewood Avenue, Midtown's large LGBTQ scene and Buckhead's bottle-service lounges. Each area is its own pocket, though, so getting between them means a ride.

Virginia Beach goes out on the boardwalk in summer, in beach bars and rooftop decks full of vacationers and sailors, with a few calmer cocktail bars at Town Center. Once the season ends it closes early.

Both give you a fair amount of outdoors, but of different kinds. Atlanta has high ground and woods: Stone Mountain's granite dome, the Kennesaw battlefield trails and floats on the Chattahoochee, with the Blue Ridge foothills and the start of the Appalachian Trail about two hours north.

Virginia Beach is flat and watery. You can walk through cypress swamp and maritime forest at First Landing, cycle to empty shoreline at False Cape and paddle out to the dolphins. There is nothing to climb.

Virginia Beach has the stronger outing on its doorstep. Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown lie about an hour away and together make a full day of colonial and Revolutionary history. Norfolk's battleship and waterfront and the Wright brothers' site at Kitty Hawk add more.

From Atlanta the drives are pleasant rather than memorable: college-town Athens, gold-rush Dahlonega among the vineyards, Madison's antebellum houses and Chattanooga's riverfront. The best-known historic town, Savannah, really needs an overnight stay.

Atlanta gives children a big city's worth of attractions: whale sharks at the Georgia Aquarium, gorillas at the zoo, Fernbank's dinosaurs, the puppetry centre and roller coasters at Six Flags. Expect plenty of driving between them.

Virginia Beach is a beach vacation first. Toddlers can paddle in the calm bay, older children can ride bikes on the boardwalk, there are sea turtles at the Virginia Aquarium, and Colonial Williamsburg's costumed trades are close by.

You will want a car in both. Atlanta has one useful MARTA rail line from the airport through downtown and Midtown to Buckhead, plus the BeltLine path. In Virginia Beach you can walk the boardwalk and take the summer trolley along Atlantic Avenue, but Sandbridge, First Landing and Town Center all mean driving.

Atlanta has more to offer. The facing malls on Peachtree Road and the Buckhead Village boutiques cover department stores and luxury labels, while Little Five Points has vintage clothes and records, though neither city has much local craft.

Virginia Beach's shopping comes down to a regional mall, chain stores at Town Center and Oceanfront surf shops among the souvenir T-shirts.

In Atlanta, what you pay depends on where you stay and when the conventions are in town. Rooms away from Buckhead are noticeably cheaper, and the big family attractions are expensive to get into, but the civil rights sites around the King park are free.

In Virginia Beach the season sets the bill. Oceanfront rooms and beach houses are expensive on summer weekends and much cheaper out of season, and the sand, boardwalk and state parks cost almost nothing. Either way, car hire, tax and tips add up.

Atlanta has a proper season. The symphony and Alliance Theatre are at the Woodruff Arts Center, opera and ballet run full programmes, and the Fox Theatre takes touring Broadway shows. On top of that come the arena tours, the Tabernacle and the small music rooms of a hip-hop, R&B and gospel city.

Virginia Beach has summer amphitheatre concerts, free stages on the boardwalk and a mid-sized hall at Town Center. For opera, the orchestra or the spring arts festival, you have to go to Norfolk.

Atlanta's best way to unwind is half an hour out, in the big Korean bathhouses of the north-eastern suburbs, with hot and cold pools, sauna rooms and long lounging halls. Virginia Beach has no bathing tradition. Its calm comes from early walks on the boardwalk and the quiet spring and autumn months rather than from its hotel spas, and in high summer it is crowded and loud.