Bethany Beach or Chicago?

Bethany Beach is built around its beach: a wide, guarded strip of pale sand facing the open Atlantic, with undeveloped dune parks, quiet Fenwick Island and the calm Inland Bays all within half an hour. The salt water is also warmer and stays good for swimming longer into September.

Chicago's beaches are a real pleasure in summer, and swimming off Oak Street with the Gold Coast towers behind you is something no seaside resort can offer. But the lake water is fresh and can turn cold overnight when the wind changes, and the beaches are good for a free afternoon rather than a whole vacation.

Bethany Beach eats like a seaside town: steamed crabs on paper, crab cakes, fried clams and boardwalk fries. The choice is small and partly closes out of season, so many visitors rely on Rehoboth's restaurants and the summer farm stands.

Chicago is in another league. Its own classics, deep-dish, Italian beef and the fully dressed hot dog, sit beside the fine dining of Randolph Street and serious Mexican, South Asian and Vietnamese cooking in Pilsen, on Devon Avenue and along Argyle Street.

For sightseeing there is no contest. Bethany Beach has its carved totem pole, a small history collection about its church-camp origins and Second World War watchtowers along the shore, and little else unless you drive.

Chicago is where the skyscraper came of age. A river cruise past the Rookery and Mies van der Rohe's towers, the Art Institute's Impressionists and the Field Museum could easily fill a week. The only thing missing is history older than the 19th century.

Bethany Beach is proudly the Quiet Resort. Evenings mean a walk on the boardwalk and there are no bars to speak of, so going out means driving to Dewey Beach or Ocean City. Chicago keeps its bars pouring until 4am, its nights run from Wicker Park cocktail bars to River North clubs and Northalsted, and its dance floors still carry the house music born in the city.

Both sit in flat country and are better for gentle outdoor time than anything strenuous, but the settings differ. Bethany Beach is a barrier island of dunes, salt marsh and shallow bays where you can kayak and go crabbing, and Assateague's wild ponies are under an hour away.

In Chicago the outdoors means the lakefront path, which runs about 29km past parks and the skyline and is good for cycling and for birdwatching along a migration route. Indiana Dunes and the canyons of Starved Rock are there for a longer day out.

Neither has a major excursion on its doorstep, and the outings carry similar weight. From Bethany Beach they are small coastal towns: historic Lewes, Victorian Berlin, the ferry across to Cape May and Chincoteague's island village.

From Chicago they are fewer and different in kind: Milwaukee's breweries and art museum by train, Oak Park's Wright houses on the city's edge, and by car the mansions of Lake Geneva or the orchards and harbour towns of southwest Michigan.

Both work well with children, but Chicago gives them more to do. The Museum of Science and Industry, the belugas at the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum's dinosaurs and the free Lincoln Park Zoo make for big days that Bethany Beach cannot match, and most of them are indoors when the weather turns.

Bethany Beach is simpler and gentler: a guarded beach, bike rides, crabbing and free evenings at the bandstand in a small, safe town. It has no zoo, aquarium or theme park, though, and most of the places aimed at children close outside summer.

In Bethany Beach you walk or cycle between your rental, the beach and the shops. But you need a car to get there, for day trips and for most restaurants outside the centre, and summer weekends clog the coast highway.

Chicago needs no car at all. The L runs from both airports into the Loop, where the main sights are within walking distance of one another. Getting between neighbourhoods often means a bus, though, and January's wind makes walking hard.

Bethany Beach has a short row of surf shops, gift stores and beach bookshops, and its serious shopping is the outlet malls outside Rehoboth, helped by Delaware's tax-free sales. Chicago has the flagships of the Magnificent Mile, luxury labels on Oak Street, the old Marshall Field's store under its Tiffany ceiling and independent boutiques in Wicker Park and Andersonville.

Neither is cheap, but the costs fall in different places. At Bethany Beach the big expense is a week's beach house rental, which is steep in July and August. Self-catering, free beaches, no sales tax and much lower prices in June and September all help.

In Chicago the weight falls on downtown hotels and their taxes, plus sit-down restaurants. Taquerias, the L and free sights such as Millennium Park and the lakefront keep day-to-day spending down.

Bethany Beach's stage is the bandstand by the boardwalk, with free summer concerts by cover bands and brass groups, and the nearest theatre is a small community one in Rehoboth.

Chicago is one of the great performance cities. It has the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Lyric Opera, Steppenwolf and the Goodman, nightly improv at Second City, and electric blues and late jazz sets in clubs on the North and South Sides.

Bethany Beach offers quiet, while Chicago offers steam. At Bethany the calm comes from the place itself: leafy residential streets, a boardwalk where after dark there is little but the sound of the surf, and near silence in spring and autumn. Apart from a few day spas, there are no treatments to speak of.

Chicago moves at a big city's pace, yet it has more real bathing. The century-old Russian-and-Turkish bathhouse in Wicker Park has scorching steam rooms and cold plunges, and there is a Korean jjimjilbang in the northern suburbs. In winter, the warm glasshouses of the Lincoln Park and Garfield Park conservatories are a good escape from the cold.