Atlantic City or Bar Harbor?

Atlantic City has the real beach. A broad, free sweep of pale sand runs the length of Absecon Island and carries on into Ventnor, Margate and Brigantine, and in summer the ocean is warm enough for long swims between the flags.

Bar Harbor's coast is rock. Sand Beach in Acadia is a pretty shell cove, but the cold water limits most people to a quick dip. The swimming people actually enjoy is in freshwater Echo Lake, so treat beach time here as a break from hiking.

Both cities eat well without being places you visit for the food, but the cooking is quite different. Atlantic City divides between casino steakhouses and buffets on one side and the older Italian-American cooking of Ducktown on the other, with subs, boardwalk pizza and crab shacks around the back bays.

Bar Harbor is a lobster town. Whole lobsters come from outdoor pots, along with lobster rolls, chowder and clams at waterfront picnic tables, blueberry pie in late summer and popovers at Jordan Pond House. The choice is narrower and many kitchens shut over winter, while the casinos in Atlantic City keep people fed all year.

Neither is a sightseeing destination, and a short visit covers each. Atlantic City's heritage is the American seaside resort itself: the original Boardwalk, the street names from the Monopoly board, Art Deco Boardwalk Hall with its giant pipe organ, and Lucy the Elephant in Margate.

Bar Harbor's heritage is quieter and more specific. It has the Abbe Museum, devoted to the Wabanaki people, Gilded Age cottages along the Shore Path, Tiffany windows at St Saviour's, and the hand-cut granite bridges of the carriage roads.

Atlantic City has a real night out and Bar Harbor barely has one. The casinos never close, the big resorts run nightclubs and pool parties on summer weekends, and beach bars offer a drink outdoors. It quietens down midweek and in winter, and the streets between the resorts are not for wandering.

In Bar Harbor, a few pubs and taprooms near Main Street keep hikers company in the evening, and the town is quiet well before midnight. Many visitors turn in early to catch sunrise on Cadillac Mountain.

Here Bar Harbor is in another league. Acadia National Park begins at the edge of town. Granite mountains rise from the sea, iron-rung climbs such as the Precipice test your nerve, and Ocean Path runs past Thunder Hole. There are about 70km of carriage roads, plus sea kayaking, whale cruises and an autumn colour that is a reason to come on its own.

Atlantic City's outdoors are flat and gentle: birdwatching in the salt marshes of the Forsythe refuge, crabbing and kayaking on the back bays, and canoeing in the Pine Barrens. They are pleasant, but an extra to a beach trip rather than a reason to go.

Atlantic City has the stronger day trips. Philadelphia, with Independence Hall and big museums, is about an hour and a half away, and Victorian Cape May about an hour. Ocean City, Wildwood, Smithville and Batsto are closer still.

From Bar Harbor, day trips mean a string of small New England harbours. Northeast Harbor and Southwest Harbor are nearby, the Cranberry Isles are a short ferry ride, and Castine, Blue Hill, Stonington and Camden lie further out. These are charming drives, but none of them is a city or a major sight.

Bar Harbor makes the better family base, as long as the children like being outdoors. They can explore tide pools, walk the sandbar to Bar Island, ride bikes on the flat carriage roads, join ranger activities and go whale-watching, all from a small, safe town. Wet days are the weak spot.

Atlantic City has warm, lifeguarded sand, the rides on the Steel Pier and Lucy the Elephant. Beyond those, the city is built around casinos that are closed to under-21s, and many families prefer nearby Ocean City or Wildwood.

In both places the small centre is easy and everything beyond it is harder, but the layout is different. Atlantic City is a long line: you walk the Boardwalk, round-the-clock jitneys run along Pacific Avenue, and trains go to Philadelphia. The shore towns and the Pine Barrens need a car, and the side streets are unappealing on foot.

Bar Harbor's downtown is compact, and in summer the free Island Explorer buses reach Acadia's trailheads well enough to manage without driving. Out of season a car is essential, and in summer the park roads and trailhead car parks fill early.

Atlantic City is the better place to shop, but for familiar labels at outlet prices rather than anything distinctive. An open-air outlet quarter near the Boardwalk is full of well-known American brands, and the casino resorts have their own indoor shopping. None of it depends on the beach season, so it trades in November just as in July. The one souvenir you couldn't buy anywhere else is a box of taffy or fudge from a Boardwalk stand.

Bar Harbor has no outlets or big brands. Its shops are small and aimed at summer visitors, and many of them shut once the autumn visitors have gone. What it does better is handmade work: local paintings, pottery and jewellery in the galleries, and woodwork and knitwear made around Maine, which make more personal gifts than anything on the Boardwalk. Expect an hour of browsing between hikes rather than a day of shopping.

Atlantic City is the easier place to visit on a budget, provided you avoid summer weekends. Casino hotels cut their room rates midweek and out of season, and the beach, the Boardwalk and the subs cost little, though resort fees and parking add up.

Bar Harbor has few rooms for its many visitors, so even plain motels are expensive through the summer and the autumn leaf season, and lobster dinners and cruises add more. Campsites and the free shuttle help, and prices drop later in the year, but so does the choice of places to eat and stay.

Atlantic City is where you go for a big show. Touring pop and rock acts, comedians and boxing fill the casino arenas and Boardwalk Hall, and summer adds free beach concerts and fireworks. It is all headline acts, though, with no theatre or opera.

Bar Harbor offers something smaller and gentler: summer chamber-music festivals in churches around Mount Desert Island, films and concerts at the 1932 Criterion Theatre, and bands in the pubs. Outside July and August there is little on.

Neither has its own bathing tradition, so the difference lies in the kind of rest each offers. Atlantic City has the larger hotel spas, with saunas and indoor pools, but its casinos are rarely calm, and peace means an empty Boardwalk in winter.

In Bar Harbor, relaxing mostly means quiet: a massage at an inn, a porch looking over Frenchman Bay, and a still harbour in June or late autumn. In high summer the crowds mean you have to leave Main Street to find that calm.