Beirut or Petra?

Beirut gives you a real summer swimming season, though not a sandy city beach. Locals dive off the rocks and platforms along the Corniche, and most visitors pay to spend the day at a beach club with pools and sunbeds, or drive up to Batroun and Byblos for cleaner water.

Petra is in the mountains, so swimming there means a hotel pool if yours has one. The Red Sea and its reefs at Aqaba are about two hours south, which makes them a separate leg of a Jordan trip rather than a beach day.

The two share a table on paper, with hummus, mutabbal, falafel and knafeh in both places, but in Beirut that table is one of the main reasons to visit. Long mezze lunches with arak, Armenian grills in Bourj Hammoud, Hamra bakeries and polished Lebanese dining rooms in Achrafieh give you a different kind of meal every day.

Wadi Musa feeds hikers rather than food lovers. Hotel buffets and roadside restaurants serve mansaf and maqluba, and the memorable moments are simpler: sage tea at a stall inside the site, zarb from a Bedouin pit oven, or a cooking class. Alcohol is mostly confined to hotels.

Petra is the one people cross continents for. Walking through the Siq to the Treasury, then on past the Royal Tombs and up the steps to the Monastery, is among the great experiences of the ancient world, and the site needs two or three days.

Beirut's history is deep but war has broken it up. The National Museum's Phoenician sarcophagi and the Sursock's modern art are the highlights, alongside Downtown's Roman baths, mosque and cathedral, while much of the interest lies in the stairways and scarred buildings of Gemmayzeh. It makes a good introduction to the region, not a destination in itself for sights.

Beirut is one of the great going-out cities of the Mediterranean. Wine and cocktail bars spill onto the pavements of Mar Mikhael and Gemmayzeh, clubs near the port run until dawn, and summer adds rooftops and beach-club parties.

Petra has almost nothing after dark. Wadi Musa is conservative and tired by nine, with dinner, a shisha on a terrace and perhaps a beer in a hotel bar, so anyone wanting a night out should save it for Amman.

Both are excellent for the outdoors, but the landscapes could hardly be more different. From Beirut you drive up into green mountains: pine forests and villages above 1,000m, the caverns of Jeita, the Qadisha cliffs and the Cedars, plus winter skiing at Faraya and Mzaar, though traffic stretches every outing.

At Petra you walk out of your door into desert rock. Trails run from the site itself to the High Place of Sacrifice and Jebel Haroun, the back route from Little Petra to the Monastery is superb, and Dana's ibex slopes and Wadi Rum's red sands are close by for climbing and nights under the stars.

Beirut is a far better base for excursions. Within two hours you can reach Byblos's harbour and castle, the vast temples of Baalbek, the Umayyad ruins at Anjar, the sea castle of Sidon, Roman Tyre and the Shouf palace at Beiteddine, each a full and different day.

From Petra the choice is thinner: Shobak castle and Dana village make a pair, Wadi Rum is the obvious outing, and Kerak or Aqaba sit about two hours away. Jerash, Madaba and the Dead Sea are too far and belong to a stay in Amman.

Neither is easy with small children, but Beirut gives families more to do. The Corniche is good for scooters and snacks by the sea, beach clubs with pools fill summer days, and the Jeita Grotto and the cable car up to Harissa are easy wins. Broken pavements and fierce traffic, though, mean taxis instead of pushchairs.

Petra is an adventure for sturdy older children who will enjoy scrambling into tombs, but the walks are long, hot and shadeless, and Wadi Musa has nothing aimed at children. If you hire camels or donkeys, choose carefully, as the animals are not always well treated.

Both are hard work, for different reasons. Beirut has no metro or tram, so you walk within Hamra, Downtown or Mar Mikhael and take ride-hailing cars or shared service taxis between them, losing time to traffic and steep, broken streets.

At Petra the challenge is your legs: the archaeological park is covered on foot over long distances and steep climbs, the town sits uphill from the gate, and anything beyond needs a driver or a rental car.

Beirut is a style-conscious city with real shopping. You will find couture and bridal houses, Lebanese designers' boutiques in Gemmayzeh and Saifi Village, malls in Verdun, and jewellers, leather workers and spice sellers in Bourj Hammoud, though the old covered souks are in Sidon or Tripoli rather than the capital.

Petra offers souvenirs: Bedouin silver and bead jewellery along the trails, and sand bottles and scarves in Wadi Musa. The women's cooperatives selling embroidery are the buys worth making.

Overall costs are similar, but they fall in different places. In Beirut your evenings decide the bill: cocktail bars, clubs and beach-club entry cost about what they would in Southern Europe, while manakish, shawarma and neighbourhood mezze stay cheap.

At Petra the big expense is fixed at the gate, as the site charges foreigners one of the steepest entry fees anywhere, which a multi-day ticket or a Jordan pass softens. Rooms and local food are fairly priced after that, and drivers to Wadi Rum or Dana add up.

Beirut has a real stage, if a small one. The Lebanese Philharmonic plays in churches and university halls, Hamra's independent theatres put on Arabic plays and cabaret, and small venues host jazz and Arabic fusion. The summer festivals at Baalbek, Beiteddine and Byblos bring big names to remarkable settings.

Petra has a single performance worth going to: Petra by Night, when candles line the Siq and Bedouin musicians play the rababa before the Treasury. Beyond that, there are only hotel dinner shows.

Neither is a place to rest, but they tire you in different ways. Beirut wears on the nerves with traffic, generators and late nights, and its hammams have nearly gone, so pampering there means a hotel spa or one of the massage and beauty salons that a well-groomed city keeps busy. Those are better for an hour of polish than for recovery. The real calm is up in the hills, at a guesthouse in a Shouf village among the pines, or on the Corniche at sunset.

Petra wears out the body instead, and the evenings in Wadi Musa are still. Its answer is the bathhouse. After a day on the Monastery steps, steam and a scrub do more for aching legs than anything on Beirut's salon menu, even though the bathhouses are a tourist import rather than a local custom. For a proper spa stay, the Dead Sea belongs to a different part of a Jordan trip.