Bar Harbor or Boston?

Neither place is a beach destination, but Boston has slightly more to offer. Revere Beach is a subway ride away, and Crane Beach's dunes and Singing Beach are on the North Shore. In August the sea there is just warm enough for a short swim.

At Bar Harbor, Sand Beach in Acadia is a beautiful cove, but the water is too cold for most people to stay in. The swimming people actually enjoy is in Echo Lake, a freshwater lake that warms up properly by midsummer.

Both cities are built around seafood, but Bar Harbor offers mostly one style: whole lobster from outdoor pots, chowder and blueberry pie. Popovers at Jordan Pond House are the local tradition. Many kitchens close for the winter.

Boston has much more range. You can eat raw-bar oysters in the Seaport and cannoli in the North End, find dim sum in Chinatown and serious New England cooking in Cambridge and the South End. Both places are expensive to eat out in.

This is where the two differ most. Bar Harbor has the Abbe Museum's Wabanaki collections, Tiffany windows at St Saviour's and Gilded Age cottages along the Shore Path. That is a few hours at most.

Boston has some of the most important Revolutionary history in the country, along the Freedom Trail. Beacon Hill and Back Bay are among the finest nineteenth-century streets in the country, and the Museum of Fine Arts and the Gardner reward several visits. Harvard and MIT add more across the river.

Bar Harbor's evenings end with a drink in a taproom on Main Street or Cottage Street, and most visitors are asleep early so they can catch sunrise on Cadillac Mountain. Boston is no all-night city either, since bars shut by 2am. Still, Irish pubs around Faneuil Hall, Fenway sports bars and student crowds in Allston and Cambridge make for full evenings out.

Bar Harbor clearly wins here. Granite mountains rise straight out of the sea. There are cliff trails, Somes Sound cuts deep into the island, you can walk across the tidal bar to Bar Island at low tide, and the carriage roads are used for cross-country skiing in winter.

Boston's nature is gentler: Olmsted's Emerald Necklace, kayaking on the Charles and ferries to the Harbor Islands. Its one real strength is whale-watching on Stellwagen Bank, but for proper mountains you have to drive north.

From Bar Harbor, outings are mostly a drive along the coast to quiet harbour villages: Northeast and Southwest Harbor, Castine, Blue Hill or Stonington. They are pretty, but none is a major sight, and you need a car.

Boston has a far longer list with more history. Salem and Concord are short train rides away, and Lexington's battlefields, Plymouth's Pilgrim story and the Newport mansions are reachable within a day.

Children have a good time in Bar Harbor if they like being outdoors: tide pools, bikes on the flat carriage roads and Acadia's junior ranger activities. A wet day leaves little to do. Boston has fewer of those wild moments but far more fallback options: the New England Aquarium, the Museum of Science, the Children's Museum and the swan boats in the Public Garden.

Both centres are easy to walk. In summer, Bar Harbor's free Island Explorer buses reach the trailheads and Jordan Pond, but they stop outside the season, and then you need a car. In summer, the park roads and trailhead car parks get crowded.

Boston adds the T and harbour ferries to its walkable neighbourhoods, so a car is only useful for leaving town. The trains are slow in places and stop around midnight, but they run all year.

Bar Harbor's shopping is a stroll past fudge shops, fleece and lobster souvenirs. Wooden bowls and knitwear are the best things to bring home. Boston has real fashion on Newbury Street, department stores at Copley Place, antiques on Charles Street and bookshops in Harvard Square. That is still not enough to plan a trip around, but it is a proper afternoon's shopping.

Neither is cheap. Bar Harbor is a little easier on the wallet, because hiking, the carriage roads and the free shuttle cost almost nothing, and the island's campgrounds keep a stay modest. Summer motel rates are high, though.

Boston's hotels are among the most expensive in the country, and every meal costs more. Free sights such as the Freedom Trail and the parks help, but there is no real way to do the city cheaply.

Bar Harbor has summer chamber concerts in island churches and films and touring acts at the 1932 Criterion Theatre, and little else. Boston is in a different league. The Boston Symphony plays in Symphony Hall, the Pops play on the Esplanade, and Boston Ballet performs at the Opera House. The A.R.T. and the Huntington stage serious drama, and Berklee students play in jazz rooms.

Neither place has a spa culture worth travelling for, so the difference is in the kind of rest. On Mount Desert Island, quiet comes with the setting, especially early or late in the season when the island empties and an evening by the water is all the treatment you need. In Boston you have to look for calm in pockets of the city: a day spa in Back Bay, an afternoon under the trees of the Arnold Arboretum or a bench on the Esplanade beside the Charles.