Bar Harbor or Newport, Rhode Island?

Neither is a classic beach destination, but Newport is the one where people actually swim in the sea. Easton's Beach sits below the Cliff Walk and Second Beach in Middletown is longer and wilder. Third Beach and Gooseberry give children calmer water, and all of them are within minutes of the harbour from late June to early September.

Bar Harbor's coast is granite, and the cold water makes Sand Beach in Acadia a place to admire rather than stay in. The good swimming there is in freshwater, at Echo Lake's guarded beach or the smaller Lake Wood.

Both eat from the same New England sea, and in both the choice runs thin over a long stay. Bar Harbor's version is rustic: whole lobsters boiled outdoors and eaten at picnic tables, wild blueberry pie in late summer, and popovers at Jordan Pond House in the park.

Newport is a little more polished and more Rhode Island in flavour. It has raw bars with local oysters, clear-broth chowder and clam cakes on the wharves, smarter dining rooms on Bellevue Avenue and wineries on the island's east shore. When you tire of the menus, Providence is close enough for dinner, and Bar Harbor has no equivalent.

Both towns were Gilded Age summer colonies, but only Newport kept its palaces. The Breakers, Marble House and The Elms on Bellevue Avenue are open with their rooms intact. The colonial streets of the Point and Historic Hill, Touro Synagogue, Trinity Church and the Redwood Library add an older layer, and together they are worth two or three days.

Bar Harbor lost many of its grand cottages in the 1947 fire, and you see what survives from the Shore Path. The Abbe Museum's focus on the Wabanaki and the Tiffany windows of St Saviour's are worth seeing, but a few hours covers them.

Newport has the livelier evenings. On summer weekends Thames Street and the wharves fill with sailors, wedding parties and pub crowds moving between waterfront decks. There are still no real clubs, and a big night out means going to Providence.

Bar Harbor barely competes. A few taprooms and harbour-view bars off Main Street and Cottage Street serve hikers, and with sunrise on Cadillac Mountain the next morning, most of the town is asleep well before midnight.

Here Bar Harbor is in a different league. Acadia's pink-granite mountains rise straight from the sea at the edge of town, with trails ranging from gentle Ocean Path walks to the iron rungs of the Beehive. Add some 70km of carriage roads, Somes Sound, puffin cruises and the quieter Schoodic Peninsula.

Newport's outdoors is flatter and more about the sea. The Cliff Walk, Brenton Point and the birdwatching at Sachuest Point are lovely, and its sailing is among the best in North America. But there is no high ground and not enough to fill a week of hiking.

Newport sits in a far better-connected corner of New England. Providence is under an hour away and Boston about an hour and a half. Bristol, Block Island by ferry, New Bedford's whaling museum and Mystic Seaport make for a varied week of outings.

From Bar Harbor, most excursions go to quiet harbour villages on Mount Desert Island or by small ferry to the Cranberry Isles. Castine, Blue Hill, Stonington and Camden are pretty but mean long drives, and nothing compares with a day in a city.

Bar Harbor has the edge for families who like being outside. Tide pools, the low-tide walk to Bar Island, flat carriage roads for bikes and Acadia's junior ranger activities keep children busy without queues or long tours. Wet days are harder, though, and the sea is too cold to play in.

Newport's beaches are better for splashing, and the carousel at Easton's Beach, the ramparts of Fort Adams and Save The Bay's touch-tank aquarium all help. But the long mansion tours tend to bore children, and peak-season traffic wears everyone down.

Both centres are small enough to walk, but Newport works without a car for more of the year. In Bar Harbor the harbour, Main Street and the Shore Path are minutes apart, and in summer the free Island Explorer makes a car-free stay in Acadia realistic. Once those buses stop for the season, though, you cannot really reach the park without driving.

Newport's local buses run up to the Bellevue Avenue mansions and out to the main beaches all year, and a trolley joins them in summer. Its weak point is the approach, since the bridges onto the island and the narrow streets clog up in summer. In both towns, you need a car for anything further out, whether that is the outlying villages or a day trip.

Neither town is a shopping destination, but Newport fills a longer afternoon. Its wharves and Thames Street have galleries, preppy sailing clothes and jewellery, Bellevue Avenue has a few smarter boutiques, and Spring and Franklin Streets are good for antiques.

Bar Harbor's Main Street is mostly fleece, fudge, lobster souvenirs and balsam pillows. The best buys are Maine crafts such as wooden bowls and knitwear from its few galleries.

Both are expensive in summer and the leaf season, and Bar Harbor is slightly less so. Once you have a room, Acadia's trails, carriage roads and free shuttle cost little, and the island's campgrounds are a real way to keep spending down.

Newport has few budget rooms in the centre, and mansion tickets, seafood dinners and parking add up quickly. The usual ways round it are staying in Middletown, coming midweek or visiting in winter, when room rates drop.

Newport has the bigger name in music, thanks to the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals at Fort Adams and the chamber concerts held in the mansion ballrooms each July. Outside festival weeks there are bar bands and community theatre, and anything larger means Providence or Boston.

Bar Harbor offers less, and it is quieter: summer chamber-music festivals in the island's churches and halls, and films, concerts and touring acts at the Criterion Theatre, an art deco cinema from 1932 on Cottage Street.

Neither town has a spa or bathing tradition, and in both the calm comes from visiting outside high summer rather than from treatments. Newport has a little more on offer, with spas in its larger resort hotels and some yoga studios, and the Cliff Walk is peaceful in late spring and early autumn.

Bar Harbor's kind of rest is simpler: a porch over Frenchman Bay, a still harbour in June or late autumn, and days that follow the tides. If you want a massage, the bigger inns offer them.