Bar Harbor or Williamsburg, Virginia?

Neither town is a beach destination, but Williamsburg comes out ahead because its water is warm. Bar Harbor's Sand Beach is a pretty shell cove, but the Gulf of Maine stays bitterly cold all summer, so the swims people enjoy are in Echo Lake and Lake Wood.

From Williamsburg you have to drive to the water. It is a short hop to the calm strip at Yorktown or about an hour to the Atlantic sand of Virginia Beach. Once you are there, the bay and the ocean are properly warm from June to September, though sea nettles can drift into the bay in high summer.

Bar Harbor eats better, and its food is more its own. Whole lobsters from outdoor pots at waterfront shacks, steamed clams, wild blueberry pie and popovers at Jordan Pond House give meals a strong sense of place, even if the choice is narrow and many kitchens shut out of season.

Williamsburg's strengths are Virginia staples: ham biscuits, peanut soup, crab cakes and bay oysters. The candlelit colonial taverns sell atmosphere more than cooking, though, and Richmond Road is mostly pancake houses and buffets. The good meals are around Merchants Square and in the simplest local dishes.

For culture, Williamsburg is in another league. The restored colonial capital along Duke of Gloucester Street fills two or three days, with its costumed tradesmen, the Governor's Palace, the Capitol and the Wren Building at William & Mary. The Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg add serious collections of folk and decorative art.

Bar Harbor's sights fit into a morning: the Abbe Museum's Wabanaki collections, the surviving Gilded Age cottages along the Shore Path, the Tiffany windows at St Saviour's and the granite carriage-road bridges. They are pleasant, but nobody travels for them.

Both towns go quiet early, and neither has a club. In Bar Harbor, summer evenings mean taprooms and harbour-view bars around Main Street, filled with hikers who want to be up for sunrise on Cadillac Mountain. Williamsburg gets a little livelier in term time, when William & Mary students fill the pubs near campus, and otherwise a tavern dinner or a candlelit ghost walk ends the day.

This is Bar Harbor's great advantage. Acadia National Park starts at the edge of town, with pink-granite summits above the sea and iron-rung climbs such as the Precipice and the Beehive. There is also the surf along Ocean Path, sea kayaking, whale cruises and some 70km of car-free carriage roads for cycling.

Williamsburg's outdoors is flat and gentle: tidal creeks, marsh and forest. You can take an easy bike ride along the Colonial Parkway or the Virginia Capital Trail, or kayak past ospreys and herons. It is lovely in spring and autumn, but humid summers and mosquitoes take the shine off, and there are no hills to climb.

Williamsburg sits in the middle of the Historic Triangle, so Jamestown and Yorktown are each well under half an hour away. The James River plantations, Richmond and the maritime museums of Hampton Roads are within about an hour, and each outing adds another chapter of the same American story.

Bar Harbor's excursions are gentler: the harbour villages around Mount Desert Island, a small ferry to the Cranberry Isles, and longer drives to Castine, Blue Hill, Stonington or Camden. These are charming coastal towns rather than sights in their own right.

Williamsburg is made for a family trip. Busch Gardens and Water Country USA cover the thrill-ride days. In the Historic Area, and on the replica ships at Jamestown and Yorktown, children get close to history, from musket firings to fife-and-drum parades. Family motels with pools are everywhere.

Bar Harbor works for active families who enjoy tide pools, the sandbar walk to Bar Island, bikes on the carriage roads and the junior ranger programmes. On a wet day there is little to fall back on, and the cold sea and the cliff trails rule out a lot for small children.

Bar Harbor is easier without a car, at least in season. Then the free Island Explorer buses link the compact downtown with the trailheads, Jordan Pond and the island villages. Outside summer you need to drive, and in high season the Park Loop Road clogs up and trailhead parking fills early.

Williamsburg has a walkable core in the car-free Duke of Gloucester Street and Merchants Square. Beyond that, the theme parks, outlets, hotels, Jamestown and Yorktown are spread out along highways with little useful bus service, so a rental car is close to essential all year.

Williamsburg has more to buy, and more variety. The colonial-style shops sell reproduction pewter, silver and pottery, Merchants Square has Virginia gifts and books, and there is a large outlet centre on Richmond Road. Bar Harbor's shopping is a souvenir stroll of fleece, fudge, blueberry jam and balsam pillows, where Maine wooden bowls, knitwear and local gallery pieces are the best finds, and many shops close in winter.

Williamsburg is the easier place to keep costs down. It has plenty of motels and chain hotels at reasonable rates outside the peak weeks. Admission to the historic sites and theme parks adds up, though, so combination passes are worth a look.

Bar Harbor has few rooms for its summer and leaf-season visitors, so even plain motels charge resort rates, and lobster dinners and cruises push the bill up further. Once you are there, hiking, cycling and the free shuttle cost little, and camping on the island is the main way to save.

Williamsburg has a little more to see. There are candlelit eighteenth-century recitals, period theatre and fife-and-drum corps on Duke of Gloucester Street, and in term time William & Mary adds student concerts and plays. Bar Harbor's programme is a summer one: chamber-music festivals in island churches and halls in July and August, plus shows at the 1932 Criterion Theatre. Once the season ends there is very little to attend.

Neither town has a spa tradition, so in both, wellness comes down to hotel treatments and finding a quiet hour. In Bar Harbor that means a porch over Frenchman Bay in June or late autumn, when the town empties and the harbour is still. Williamsburg's calm comes from the resort spas along the James River, early walks on the empty colonial greens and slow drives on the wooded Colonial Parkway, well away from the theme parks.