Baltimore or Chicago?

Chicago has actual city beaches. Sandy strips run along Lake Michigan from Oak Street, right under the Gold Coast towers, to North Avenue's volleyball courts, and in midsummer you can walk from a museum to a lifeguarded swim. The fresh water is cooler than many expect, and a wind shift can chill it overnight.

Baltimore's water is a working harbour, so swimming means a forty-minute drive to Sandy Point on the Chesapeake. The brackish bay there is warmer than the lake, but sea nettles and closures after heavy rain take some of the shine off. The ocean beaches are about three hours away.

Baltimore's food is a regional speciality: blue crabs steamed with Old Bay and cracked with mallets in summer, lump crab cakes year-round, and oysters and coddies at Lexington Market. Add Little Italy's red-sauce restaurants and a few chef-led places in Hampden and Harbor East, and the range stops fairly soon.

Chicago goes much deeper. Its street canon of deep-dish, tavern-cut pizza, Italian beef and the dressed hot dog sits alongside one of the country's leading fine-dining scenes. Neighbourhoods such as Pilsen, Devon Avenue and Argyle Street add Mexican, South Asian and Vietnamese cooking that could fill a week of meals.

Baltimore has more history on the ground: the 1814 defence of Fort McHenry, the colonial-era cobbles of Fells Point and street after street of marble-stooped rowhouses. Its two free art museums, with the Cone Collection's Matisse holdings and the Walters' antiquities, are well worth a visit. Two or three days covers it.

Chicago works on a bigger scale. The Loop is a lesson in how the skyscraper developed, best seen from a river cruise, and Wright's Prairie houses are close by. The Art Institute and the Museum Campus give it museum depth Baltimore cannot match, even though nothing in Chicago predates the 19th century.

Baltimore is a bar town with no club scene to speak of. The best of it is the old taverns around the cobbled square in Fells Point, plus rooftops and sports bars on Federal Hill, and everything closes at 2am.

Chicago gives you more choice and later nights, with many bars licensed until 4am. Wicker Park and Logan Square have cocktail and dive bars, River North has dance clubs, and house-music nights draw on the city's own history. Northalsted is one of the country's best-known gay districts.

Neither city is an outdoors destination, and they offer different kinds of green space. Around Baltimore the land is wooded and hilly: river gorges in Patapsco Valley at the city's edge, trout streams along Gunpowder Falls, and sailing on the sheltered Chesapeake out of Annapolis, with the Blue Ridge about ninety minutes west.

Chicago's outdoors is mostly the lake. The shoreline path runs about 29km past beaches and parks, best covered by bike, and the dunes of Indiana Dunes and the sandstone canyons of Starved Rock are the main escapes from otherwise flat prairie.

This is where Baltimore pulls well ahead. With Washington's Smithsonian and Philadelphia's Independence Hall each about an hour away by train, a stay here can take in three historic cities. By car, colonial Annapolis, the Gettysburg battlefield, Harpers Ferry and the Eastern Shore villages are all easy outings.

Chicago's surroundings ask more effort for less reward. Milwaukee by train and the Wright houses of Oak Park are the easy wins, while Lake Geneva and the Michigan harbour towns need a car and make pleasant rather than memorable days.

Both cities have a first-rate aquarium, Baltimore's National Aquarium on the Inner Harbor and Chicago's Shedd on the lakefront. Baltimore's appeal is how compact it is: the aquarium, the science centre, Port Discovery and the historic ships sit close together around the water. Beyond the harbour, though, families tend to rely on cars.

Chicago gives children more to do. The Museum of Science and Industry, with its coal mine and U-boat, can take a whole day, the Field Museum has dinosaurs, Lincoln Park Zoo is free, and in summer there are lifeguarded lake beaches. All of it is reachable by train or on foot.

In Baltimore, the waterfront from Federal Hill to Fells Point is easy to walk, and water taxis make the trip to Fort McHenry a pleasure. Away from the harbour, though, one metro line and one light rail line cover little that visitors need, so Hampden, the art museum and the zoo mean a taxi or a car.

Chicago works without a car. The L runs from both airports into a flat, gridded Loop where the main sights are a walk apart. The weak points are buses for trips across neighbourhoods and the long distances in a freezing January.

Chicago is the place to shop. The Magnificent Mile's flagships and department stores, luxury labels on Oak Street, and the Tiffany ceiling of the old Marshall Field's on State Street are backed by independent fashion in Wicker Park and design and vintage shops in Andersonville.

Baltimore has no department store or luxury street in the city. Its shopping amounts to an afternoon on Hampden's Avenue among vintage clothes and kitsch, plus antiques and records in Fells Point and Old Bay souvenirs from the markets.

Baltimore is the cheaper of the two, mainly because of hotels, which is why many visitors to Washington stay there. The Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters are free. The catch is that taxis, which most visitors end up using, add to the daily spend.

Chicago's downtown hotels and high taxes make it dearer, especially in summer. Taquerias and hot dog stands, cheap L rides and free sights such as Millennium Park and Lincoln Park Zoo help, and staying outside the Loop saves more.

Baltimore has a solid scene for its size: the Baltimore Symphony at the Meyerhoff, free student and faculty concerts at the Peabody Institute in Mount Vernon, touring shows at the Hippodrome, and indie and experimental bands in Station North clubs.

Chicago is one of the main reasons people go to the Midwest for the arts. It has the Chicago Symphony and the Lyric Opera, deep theatre from Steppenwolf and the Goodman down to storefront companies, nightly improv at Second City, electric blues and late jazz sets, and free summer concerts at the Pritzker Pavilion.

Neither city is somewhere to unwind, but Chicago has more to offer. Its century-old Russian-and-Turkish bathhouse in Wicker Park, a Korean-style jjimjilbang in the suburbs and the warm glasshouses of the Garfield Park and Lincoln Park conservatories give it real places to rest.

Baltimore's options are hotel spas and yoga studios, a quiet hour in Druid Hill Park or the Walters galleries, and a drive to the Eastern Shore for anything more restful.