Baltimore or Lake George?

Baltimore is a port city, and its waterfront is a working harbour. The nearest real beach is Sandy Point, about forty minutes away, where the brackish bay brings sea nettles in high summer. The Atlantic surf is a three-hour drive.

Lake George makes swimming the point of a summer stay. There is a broad state beach at the southern end of the village and a smaller one in Shepard Park, and you can also swim from the islands in the Narrows. The water is fresh and clear, but only warm from late June to early September, and the sand fills early on hot weekends.

Baltimore has a food identity of its own: steamed blue crabs with Old Bay on brown-paper tables, lump crab cakes, oysters at Lexington Market and red-sauce Italian cooking in Little Italy. Chef-led restaurants in Hampden and Harbor East add some range.

At Lake George most meals mean pizza, pancakes and lakeside decks where you pay for the view. Bolton Landing has a few more careful dining rooms with Adirondack game and lake fish, but visitors who care about food tend to drive to Saratoga Springs, and many village kitchens close out of season.

Baltimore has far more to see. There are two free art museums, one with a major Matisse collection, plus the fort that inspired the national anthem, the B&O roundhouse and historic ships in the Inner Harbor. Fells Point and Mount Vernon keep their old architecture.

Lake George's history comes down to Fort William Henry and the 1757 siege behind The Last of the Mohicans, plus a small museum in the old courthouse. Fort Ticonderoga and Saratoga are richer, but both mean a drive.

Neither town is a clubbing destination, but Baltimore gives you a choice of bar districts. There are old taverns around the cobbled square in Fells Point, rooftops and sports bars on Federal Hill after Orioles games, and dive bars with an artier crowd in Station North.

Lake George has one scene, and only in summer: young boaters drinking on the decks along Canada Street and the waterfront on weekends. From autumn to spring the evenings are quiet, and the shore hamlets go to bed early.

Lake George is the outdoor destination of the two. There are 50km of lake between forested ridges, over a hundred islands with campsites, and Prospect Mountain right above the village. Tongue Mountain and the High Peaks are within reach, and Gore Mountain offers serious skiing in winter.

Baltimore's green spaces are gentler. You get the wooded gorges of Patapsco Valley, trout streams along Gunpowder Falls, a large urban forest in Leakin Park and sailing on the Chesapeake from Annapolis. The real hills are about an hour and a half west.

Baltimore sits on the Northeast rail corridor, so Washington's Smithsonian museums and Philadelphia's Independence Hall are each about an hour away by train. With a car you can add Annapolis, Gettysburg, Harpers Ferry and the Eastern Shore villages.

Lake George's outings are good but all by road. Saratoga Springs, with its racecourse and battlefield, is under an hour south, Fort Ticonderoga about an hour north and Lake Placid under two hours. Vermont's small towns make a pleasant drive east.

Lake George was built as a family resort. It has the Great Escape and its water park, a beach that slopes gently into calm water, paddlewheel steamboats from the village pier and a whole street of mini golf and arcades. Motels with pools and cottages with kitchens keep things easy, though almost everything shuts outside summer.

Baltimore offers a strong cluster of attractions around the Inner Harbor, open all year: the National Aquarium, the Science Center and Port Discovery. Away from the water the city is uneven, and families usually move between areas by taxi.

Baltimore is clearly the easier of the two without a car. Fells Point, Harbor East, Little Italy, the Inner Harbor and Federal Hill join up along one waterfront promenade, and water taxis run between the piers and out to Fort McHenry. Mount Vernon's museums are a short uphill walk away, and Penn Station has fast trains up and down the coast. Hampden and the zoo are the weak spots, since the one metro line and the one light rail line don't reach them, so you'll need a bus or a taxi.

At Lake George, walking only covers the village itself: Canada Street, the steamboat pier, Shepard Park and the fort are a few minutes apart. Beyond them, seasonal trolleys are the only public transport. To reach a western-shore hamlet, a trailhead or anywhere further afield, you have to drive, and parking in the village is a nuisance in summer. A rented boat is the best way to see the lake itself.

Neither place is worth a trip for shopping, and what each offers is different. Baltimore has character: vintage clothes, kitsch and local art on the Avenue in Hampden, and antiques and records in Fells Point.

Lake George has brand outlets on Route 9 and Adirondack crafts such as balsam pillows, maple syrup and rustic furniture. These make better gifts than anything on souvenir-lined Canada Street.

In Baltimore the savings come from where you stay and what you visit. At Lake George they come from when you go. Hotels in Baltimore cost less than in Washington, and the two main art museums are free. Still, restaurant bills with tax and tip, crab feasts and the taxis you end up taking push the daily total up.

Lake George charges full resort rates on July and August weekends by the lake, and boat hire and theme park tickets add up quickly for a family. Weekdays, spring and the weeks after the leaves fall are much cheaper. Cottages with kitchens, older motels on Route 9 or a room in Glens Falls cut costs further, and the beaches and trails cost little to use.

Baltimore has performances all year, at their best from autumn to spring. The Baltimore Symphony plays at the Meyerhoff, the Peabody Institute holds many free concerts, touring Broadway shows come to the Hippodrome, and Station North has small indie and punk venues.

Lake George only comes alive in summer. There are free concerts by the water in Shepard Park, a chamber music festival in August and a jazz weekend in September. For orchestras and big touring acts, people drive to the amphitheatre in Saratoga Springs.

Lake George is the better place to slow down, as long as you stay away from the village in July. The resort hotels near Bolton Landing have full spas, and lakeside cottages make for quiet mornings on the water. Saratoga's historic mineral baths are under an hour away, and early autumn is the calmest season.

Baltimore offers little more than hotel spas and yoga studios in Harbor East and Hampden. Its quiet moments are a walk under the trees of Druid Hill Park or an hour in the Walters galleries.