Bar Harbor or Philadelphia?

Neither is a beach destination, but Philadelphia gives you the better swimming, even though you have to leave town for it. The Jersey Shore is a little over an hour away, with wide sand and an Atlantic that warms properly by late summer, so a day at Ocean City or Cape May means real swimming.

Bar Harbor's Sand Beach is the prettier spot, a shell-sand cove between granite headlands, but the Gulf of Maine is too cold for more than a quick dip. Swimmers head to Echo Lake instead, which is a refreshing break from hiking rather than a beach day.

Both have a signature dish, lobster in Maine and sandwiches in Philadelphia, but Philadelphia's food goes much deeper. Beyond cheesesteaks and hoagies it has Reading Terminal and the Italian Market, chef-run dining rooms where you bring your own wine, and good Mexican and Vietnamese cooking in East Passyunk and Fishtown, all year round.

Bar Harbor eats well within a narrow range: lobster boiled at waterfront picnic tables, chowder, blueberry pie and popovers at Jordan Pond House. It is memorable for a few days, but the choice is limited, summer evenings mean queues and many kitchens close out of season.

Philadelphia has some of the most important historic sites in America: Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, the Georgian streets of Society Hill and Elfreth's Alley. Its museums carry real weight too, among them the Barnes, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Penn Museum and the eerie Eastern State Penitentiary, enough for four or five days.

Bar Harbor's culture fits into an afternoon. You have the Abbe Museum's Wabanaki collections, the surviving Gilded Age cottages along the Shore Path, the Tiffany windows at St Saviour's and the hand-cut granite bridges of the carriage roads.

Philadelphia is a proper drinking city, with warehouse bars and beer halls in Fishtown and Northern Liberties, cocktails around Rittenhouse Square and the long-established Gayborhood, though even here a night out means pubs rather than clubs. Bar Harbor has a few taprooms and harbour-view bars on Main Street in summer and at best a weekend band. The town is asleep before midnight, partly because hikers get up early for sunrise on Cadillac Mountain.

Here Bar Harbor is in another league. Acadia's pink-granite mountains rise straight from the sea at the edge of town. There are cliff climbs on the Beehive, the surf along Ocean Path, the fjord-like Somes Sound and 70km of carriage roads, with kayaking and puffin cruises offshore.

Philadelphia's outdoors is green and gentle: the wooded Wissahickon gorge inside the city, the Schuylkill River Trail out to Valley Forge, and the Pine Barrens or the Poconos further out. It is good for a run or a ride, but nothing like Acadia's coastline.

Philadelphia is a superb base. New York, Baltimore and Washington are all within about two hours by train, and Amish Lancaster County, Princeton, Longwood Gardens and the Gettysburg battlefield are within reach too.

From Bar Harbor the outings are quieter and you need a car. You can visit the harbour villages around Mount Desert Island, take a ferry to the Cranberry Isles, or drive to coastal towns such as Castine, Stonington and Camden. They make pleasant drives, but none is worth a trip in its own right.

Philadelphia gives children more to do and copes better with bad weather. There is the Franklin Institute's giant heart, the Please Touch Museum, the dinosaur hall at the Academy of Natural Sciences and the country's oldest zoo, while the costumed guides of Old City bring history to life for older children.

Bar Harbor suits active families, with tide pools, the sandbar walk to Bar Island, bikes on the carriage roads and junior ranger programmes. On a wet day, though, there is little to do indoors, and the cliff trails are too much for small children.

Philadelphia is the easier city to get around. Penn's flat grid lets you walk from Old City to the Parkway, and the subway, trolleys and a direct airport train cover the rest, if a little roughly.

Bar Harbor's centre is tiny and easy to walk, and in season the free Island Explorer buses reach the trailheads. Outside summer, though, you need a car, and in July and August the park roads and trailhead car parks fill up.

Shopping in Bar Harbor is a summer stroll and not much more. Main Street and Cottage Street sell fudge, fleece and moose souvenirs, and the only things really worth taking home are Maine crafts such as a turned wooden bowl or a piece of knitwear. There is no fashion and no department store, and many shops close for the winter.

Philadelphia is much the better place to shop, and it shops all year. Walnut Street around Rittenhouse Square has the brands and boutiques that Bar Harbor lacks, Old City and Fishtown add independent shops, and Jewelers' Row and the Italian Market give the city a character of its own. With the huge King of Prussia mall half an hour away and no sales tax on clothing, you can plan a day around shopping here, though the city has no luxury street of its own.

Neither is cheap, but Bar Harbor is the more expensive of the two in the months worth visiting. A small island town with few rooms charges resort rates for a plain motel all summer and through the leaf season, and the things that make a stay there, lobster dinners and whale cruises, are paid extras. Once you are inside the park, the trails and carriage roads cost little, and camping is the real way to save.

Philadelphia is the cheaper choice. Center City hotels charge ordinary American rates, but a big city has far more rooms to choose from than a small island, and the founding sights of Independence National Historical Park are free. A cheesesteak or hoagie makes a filling lunch, and bringing your own wine to dinner keeps the evening bill down. The big art museums charge full admission, and so do most of the other attractions.

Bar Harbor's stage is a summer one. Chamber-music festivals fill island churches and halls in July and August, and the 1932 art deco Criterion Theatre shows films and hosts concerts, but once the season ends there is very little to attend.

An evening at the Philadelphia Orchestra on the Avenue of the Arts is one of the reasons to visit the city. Opera and ballet play in the ornate Academy of Music, Curtis Institute students give recitals, and the Walnut Street Theatre stages plays all through the season. Small jazz clubs and indie venues in Fishtown and University City cover the rest.

Neither has a spa tradition, so the difference is in the kind of calm. Bar Harbor offers stillness: a porch over Frenchman Bay, an empty harbour in June or late autumn, and days that follow the tides, though in high summer Main Street fills with crowds.

Philadelphia is faster and gruffer. Rest there means a hotel or day spa, a Korean-style bathhouse in the suburbs, or a bench in one of Penn's squares and a walk in the Wissahickon.