Bermuda or Turks and Caicos?

Both are beach destinations above all, but Turks and Caicos has the better beaches. Grace Bay on Providenciales is a long, reef-sheltered stretch of fine white sand over pale, calm water. Taylor Bay and Sapodilla Bay are shallow enough to wade, and boats run out to empty cays such as Pine Cay. Grand Turk and Salt Cay have quieter shores with the reef close in.

Bermuda's South Shore is a different kind of beach. It is a chain of pink-tinged coves between limestone rocks, from Horseshoe Bay to the smaller Jobson's Cove, with good snorkelling among the rocks at Tobacco Bay. It is beautiful, but the swimming season ends in autumn, while in Turks and Caicos it never really stops.

Neither is a place to travel for food, but Bermuda has more of its own dishes. They include the dark fish chowder finished at the table with black rum and sherry pepper sauce, the fried fish sandwich on raisin bread and the Sunday breakfast of codfish and potatoes, washed down with a rum swizzle. Harbour-view restaurants in Hamilton and casual places in St George's spread the eating beyond the resorts.

In Turks and Caicos the cooking centres on conch, served fried, in fritters, in chowder or raw with lime. The most local meal is a fish fry or a roadside shack near Blue Hills. Most other meals are international resort menus along Grace Bay. Both islands import almost everything and neither has a market or street-food culture.

Bermuda has far more history to see. St George's, one of the oldest continuously inhabited English towns in the Americas, has whitewashed roofs, St Peter's Church and the roofless Unfinished Church. Its UNESCO listing also covers the forts around the island. The National Museum inside the Dockyard's stone keep tells the story of shipwrecks, slavery and naval power, and a couple of days covers it all well.

Turks and Caicos has history, but it takes a flight to reach most of it. It sits on Grand Turk, with Cockburn Town's Bermudian-style houses, the Molasses Reef wreck in the National Museum and the old salt ponds. On Providenciales there is little beyond the ruins of Cheshire Hall.

Bermuda at least has a street for going out. Front Street in Hamilton and the lanes behind it have British-style pubs, waterfront bars and a few late venues, at their liveliest on summer weekends.

Turks and Caicos offers sunset drinks at Grace Bay beach bars and resort lounges, with the occasional band, and most evenings are over well before midnight. Neither has a club scene, and both are quiet out of season.

The water is the main attraction on both, and Turks and Caicos is a little more varied. It has steep wall dives close to shore off Grand Turk and Salt Cay, kayaking among the islets of turquoise Chalk Sound, kiteboarding at Long Bay and bonefishing on the Caicos flats. On land there are flamingo ponds on North Caicos and the caves on Middle Caicos.

Bermuda's speciality is diving and snorkelling on centuries of shipwrecks on its reef. It is also greener and better for exploring on foot. The Railway Trail runs along much of the island for walking and cycling, and Spittal Pond has cliff paths. Both get passing humpback whales in spring, and the boats off Salt Cay go out to meet them.

Island-hopping is what Turks and Caicos has and Bermuda lacks. Bermuda sits on its own in the Atlantic, about two hours by air from the nearest mainland, so a day out just means another corner of the same island: the ferry across the Great Sound to the Dockyard, the bus to St George's or a boat to the small islands of Castle Harbour.

From Providenciales, a short ferry crosses to North Caicos, and a car takes you on over the causeway to Middle Caicos, with its sleepy settlements, plantation ruins and long empty shores. The best day out is a short flight to Grand Turk and Salt Cay for the old capital and the salt-raking landscape. Flights between the islands take some planning, though, and the villages are small.

Turks and Caicos comes out ahead for families because its beaches and resorts do most of the work. Bermuda has calm, shallow water too, at Shelly Bay, Clearwater Beach and John Smith's Bay, and it has more to do on dry land. The aquarium, museum and zoo at Flatts fill half a day, and the Crystal Caves, the forts and the ferry to the Dockyard keep older children busy. Every outing depends on buses, ferries or taxis, though, and walking the narrow roads without pavements is awkward with small children.\n\nTurks and Caicos has nothing like Flatts or the caves, no zoo, aquarium or children's museum, but its beach life suits young families better.

Grace Bay shelves gently and is usually calm, and the lagoons at Taylor Bay and Sapodilla Bay are shallow enough for toddlers. At Smith's Reef or Bight Reef children can see fish and turtles straight from the sand. Several Grace Bay resorts are built around families, with kids' clubs and pools, so the days are easy to run, though teenagers tire of that routine sooner than younger children.

Bermuda is much easier to get around without your own transport. It is about 35km end to end, and the pink-and-blue buses and the harbour ferries link Hamilton, St George's, the Dockyard and the South Shore beaches. Visitors can't rent ordinary cars, though, and the narrow, walled roads make mopeds a risk for the inexperienced.

Turks and Caicos has no useful public transport. On Providenciales you take taxis or hire a car to reach Chalk Sound, the south-side bays or the ferry dock. Going further means a ferry, a car and small planes, which is why many visitors stay on Grace Bay.

Hamilton's Front Street gives Bermuda the edge, with a short row of long-established stores selling British woollens, linen and Bermuda shorts. The Dockyard craft market adds cedarwood carvings and rum cakes. Still, shopping is a side activity here, and imported goods are expensive.

In Turks and Caicos, shopping means a few open-air plazas on Grace Bay with resort wear and duty-free watches. The best souvenirs are woven palm-straw baskets and hats from North and Middle Caicos, and sea salt from the old salt islands.

Both are among the most expensive places in the world for a vacation, with imported food, costly rooms and few budget beds. The difference lies in where you can save.

In Bermuda, the cheap public buses and ferries keep down the cost of getting around, which you can't do in Turks and Caicos. There, taxis, boat trips and inter-island flights add up quickly. On the other hand, a group villa, meals at conch shacks and travelling outside the winter peak can take some of the edge off Turks and Caicos.

Bermuda has a little more to attend. The long-running Bermuda Festival of the Performing Arts brings visiting musicians, dancers and theatre companies to Hamilton in winter, and the masked gombey dancers and their drums appear at Boxing Day and other parades.

Turks and Caicos has its own sound, ripsaw music, played with a saw scraped by a screwdriver at fish fries and resort evenings. At Christmas there is the Maskanoo parade, but there are no theatres or concert halls.

Turks and Caicos is the better choice for a stay built around rest and treatments. The private island resorts on the cays north of Providenciales, Parrot Cay among them, make yoga, healthy food and massage the whole point of the stay, and the Grace Bay resorts have open-air spas.

Bermuda's spas sit in the large South Shore and Hamilton resorts, some with sea-view treatment rooms, and its quiet roads make it easy to unwind. Neither has a bathing tradition or thermal water.