Bethany Beach or Myrtle Beach?

Both towns exist for the beach, but Myrtle Beach has more of it and warmer water. The Grand Strand gives you about 100km of wide, gently shelving sand with small waves, and in midsummer the sea is warm enough to stay in for hours. You can choose between the crowded central blocks and the calmer, dune-backed shores at Surfside, Garden City and the state parks.

Bethany Beach offers a single guarded stretch of pale sand with moderate surf and a shorter swimming season, as the Atlantic stays cooler this far north. Its strengths are the quiet and the range within half an hour, from the wild dunes of Delaware Seashore State Park to the calm Inland Bays for toddlers.

Neither is a place to travel for food, and in both the best eating is seafood just outside town. Bethany Beach means steamed blue crabs cracked at picnic tables and summer farm-stand corn and peaches, with Rehoboth Beach's larger restaurant scene and craft breweries 25 minutes away. Myrtle Beach runs on buffets and chains along the strip, but Murrells Inlet's waterfront and Calabash-style fried seafood across the state line repay the short drive.

Sightseeing is thin in both, but Myrtle Beach at least has a proper day's worth. Brookgreen Gardens sets American figurative sculpture among live oaks on a former rice plantation, with exhibits on the people enslaved there, and the Moorish-style Atalaya stands next door.

Bethany Beach has little beyond its carved totem pole, a small local history collection and the wartime concrete watchtowers along the shore. For museums or historic streets you need to drive to Lewes or further.

This is where the two differ most. Bethany Beach calls itself the Quiet Resort, and an evening there is dinner, a boardwalk stroll and bed; going out means a drive to Dewey Beach or Ocean City.

Myrtle Beach has a loud, casual summer scene of beach bars, rooftop decks and themed clubs in the entertainment complexes that run late. North Myrtle Beach adds a local twist with shag dancing in long-standing clubs on Main Street. Expect rowdiness during spring break and rally weeks, and early closing out of season.

Both sit on flat, low coastal land with gentle rather than strenuous outdoor time, and neither has hills. Around Bethany Beach the draw is water and wildlife: paddling the shallow Inland Bays, crabbing off docks and the wild ponies of Assateague Island under an hour south.

Myrtle Beach leans more towards forest and swamp, with alligators and wading birds at Huntington Beach State Park and kayaking through the Waccamaw River's cypress swamps. It also has dozens of golf courses, which Bethany cannot match.

Bethany Beach's outings are a cluster of small towns close at hand, while Myrtle Beach's best one is a single historic city two hours away. From Bethany you can wander Berlin's Victorian main street or the old port of Lewes, take the ferry across Delaware Bay to Cape May, or drive a little over an hour to Chincoteague's island village or Dover's colonial green.

From Myrtle Beach the standout is Charleston, with antebellum streets, harbour forts and plantations. It makes for a long day in the car, but none of Bethany's outings matches it. Closer by, Georgetown's old waterfront and rice-culture museum and the old-fashioned beach village of Pawleys Island are easy short outings.

Bethany Beach gives children a gentle small-town week, while Myrtle Beach gives them a full programme of big attractions, and for most families the second offers more to do. At Bethany the days go on the guarded beach, bike rides, crabbing off a dock and free evenings at the bandstand. For rides or anything bigger you drive to Rehoboth or Ocean City, and most child-focused places close once summer ends.

Myrtle Beach has a large aquarium, an amusement park with an old wooden roller coaster, water parks, a big wheel on the boardwalk and endless themed mini-golf. Its resort hotels add lazy rivers and kiddie pools. The cost is heat, traffic and some rowdy stretches of oceanfront at night, and spring break weeks are best avoided.

Bethany Beach is the easier of the two once you arrive. The town is small and flat, so many visitors walk or cycle between rental, beach and shops all week, and a seasonal bus links the coast resorts.

Myrtle Beach is spread along about 100km of multi-lane highway with few pavements, so you will drive to almost every restaurant and attraction. Walking only works within a single oceanfront area or along the sand itself. Both need a car to arrive, and both clog on summer weekends.

Myrtle Beach has more shopping on the spot, with two big outlet centres, waterfront complexes and the town-centre feel of the Market Common, though little that is independent or local beyond sweetgrass baskets. Bethany Beach itself has only a row of surf shops, gift stores and bookshops. Its serious shopping is the outlet strip outside Rehoboth, 25 minutes away and helped by Delaware's tax-free shopping.

Myrtle Beach is the cheaper stay, mostly because it has so many hotel rooms, motels and condos. Out of the summer peak, oceanfront rooms can be very cheap, and kitchens cut food costs, though July and long weekends push prices up sharply.

Bethany Beach is mostly weekly beach-house and condo rentals, which are costly near the ocean in high summer, with few hotels to choose from. June, September and self-catering ease the bill, as do free beach access and no sales tax.

Myrtle Beach has a real evening show circuit: large theatres staging country, gospel and comedy revues, dinner shows with knights or pirates, and touring acts at the main entertainment complex. It is polished entertainment rather than serious drama. Bethany Beach offers free summer concerts by cover bands and brass groups at the boardwalk bandstand, and beyond that only Rehoboth's small community theatre and autumn jazz festival.

Neither has a spa or bathing tradition, so the difference is in what rest looks like. At Bethany Beach the whole town is slow, with leafy residential streets and a calm boardwalk where you hear little but the surf. Myrtle Beach has more resort spas with massage rooms, but you have to step away from the noisy strip to Pawleys Island, or come in spring or autumn, to find real quiet.