Bethany Beach or Louisville?

This is the clearest difference between the two. Bethany Beach is built around its sand: a lifeguarded strip along the whole town, moderate surf, and the wild dunes of Delaware Seashore State Park within a short drive. Families with small children can also use the calm, shallow water of the Inland Bays.

Louisville sits on the Ohio, a river of barges and strong currents, and the nearest sea is hundreds of kilometres away. Summer swimming means a pool or a drive to a reservoir lake in the countryside.

Louisville has much more to eat and drink. It has a whole culture of its own around bourbon, with Whiskey Row, distillery tasting rooms downtown and the old fashioned as the house drink. Local dishes like the hot brown, Benedictine and Derby pie are served in good Southern and farm-to-table restaurants in NuLu, the Highlands and Butchertown.

Bethany Beach is happy, simple summer eating: blue crabs cracked at picnic tables, fried clams, boardwalk fries and sweet corn from farm stands. Many places close out of season, and anything more ambitious means driving to Rehoboth Beach.

Here the gap is wide. Louisville can fill two or three days: Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby Museum, the Muhammad Ali Center, the Slugger and Frazier museums among the cast-iron fronts of Main Street, the Speed Art Museum, and the large Victorian district of Old Louisville.

Bethany Beach has its carved totem pole, a small collection on the church camp the town grew from, and wartime watchtowers along the shore. For any real sightseeing you have to drive somewhere else.

Louisville is a city of bars rather than clubs, but it has plenty of them. There are dive bars and patios along Bardstown Road, bourbon and cocktail bars in NuLu, a covered entertainment block downtown for groups, and some licences that keep bars open very late. Derby season in spring is its loudest time.

Bethany Beach calls itself the Quiet Resort and means it. Evenings are a stroll on the boardwalk and an early night, and anyone who wants to go out drives to the beach bars of Dewey Beach or Ocean City.

The two are about even, but the outdoors works in opposite ways. Bethany Beach is about water: kayaking and paddleboarding on the bays, surfing and fishing at Indian River Inlet, ospreys over the salt marsh, and the wild ponies of Assateague Island under an hour away.

Louisville is about woods and parkland. There are Olmsted's hilly Cherokee and Iroquois parks, the fossil beds at the Falls of the Ohio, proper hiking in Jefferson Memorial and Bernheim forests, and Mammoth Cave within a long morning's drive.

Louisville has the better day trips, with a clear theme to them. Bourbon country around Bardstown and Frankfort has distilleries to tour and taste at, and Lexington's thoroughbred farms and Keeneland racecourse are a little over an hour away. Shaker Village and Lincoln's birthplace add some history.

From Bethany Beach the outings are pleasant but smaller. You can visit historic Lewes, the bigger resorts along the coast, Berlin's Victorian main street, or take the ferry across Delaware Bay to Cape May. Most of them feel like more seaside rather than a change of scene.

Bethany Beach is the easier family vacation. The guarded beach, quiet streets and short distances let children cycle, go crabbing and wander the boardwalk with little planning, and the free bandstand evenings are aimed at them. What it lacks is a big rainy-day attraction, and much of it closes outside summer.

Louisville has exactly those attractions: a well-regarded zoo, the Kentucky Science Center, a theme park with a water park, and underground ziplines in the Mega Cavern. But they are spread across the city, so family days are built around the car and the summer heat.

Neither is easy without a car, but the problem is different in each. In Bethany Beach you can park for the week and walk or cycle between the house, the beach and the shops. The car comes out for supermarkets, day trips and the coast highway, which gets heavy traffic on summer weekends.

In Louisville, only downtown and NuLu are walkable. Churchill Downs, the Highlands and the parks all need a drive or a ride-hail, though traffic is light and parking is rarely hard.

The two are close, but they suit different shoppers. Bethany Beach is for volume. The town itself has only a short row of surf shops, gift stores and bookshops, but less than half an hour north, the outlet malls on the highway outside Rehoboth Beach draw people from across the region, and because Delaware charges no sales tax, the price on the tag is what you pay. It is the place to stock up on clothes, shoes and familiar brands.

Louisville has fewer shops but more character. What people take home here is local: bourbon from distillery shops that rarely reaches other states, Derby hats and racing memorabilia, and vintage clothing and records along Bardstown Road, with a few design shops in NuLu. If you want things you can't find anywhere else, Louisville is the better choice. If you want a big haul of brand names, the Delaware outlets win.

Louisville is the easier place to keep costs down. Outside the racing season, hotel rooms downtown are moderately priced, and the parks, riverfront and Old Louisville's streets cost nothing. The bill grows through meals with tax and tip added and the daily cost of getting around, and Derby week in spring is far more expensive.

Bethany Beach is expensive in July and August, when most people rent a house or condo by the week near the ocean. June and September are much cheaper, and self-catering, free beach access and no sales tax help a week's budget.

Louisville has a full set of companies for a city its size. The Kentucky Center hosts the orchestra, opera and ballet, Actors Theatre is known for new American plays, there is Shakespeare in Central Park in summer, and bars on Bardstown Road have regular bluegrass and Americana.

Bethany Beach has free summer concerts at the bandstand by the boardwalk, with cover bands and brass groups playing to families on blankets. For a play or a jazz festival you have to go to Rehoboth Beach.

Neither has a spa or bathing tradition, so the difference is in the pace. Bethany Beach is quieter: leafy residential streets, a boardwalk with little more than the sound of the surf after dark, and spring and autumn weeks when the town is almost silent. It suits people who want to read, sleep and walk.

Louisville relaxes in its own way, with a porch afternoon in the Highlands or a drive through horse country. For proper treatments, the old mineral-spring hotels of French Lick and West Baden Springs in Indiana are about an hour and a half away.