Bethany Beach or New York?

At Bethany Beach the beach is the whole point: pale sand directly in front of the town, lifeguards all summer, and the quiet sands of Fenwick Island, the dunes at Delaware Seashore State Park and the calm Inland Bays for small children all close by. You step out of a rental and you are there.

New York's beaches are real but a different thing. Coney Island and the Rockaways sit at the end of long subway rides, come with crowds and an amusement park, and make a good break from the city rather than a beach vacation.

Bethany Beach eats like a seaside town: steamed crabs on paper, fried clams, boardwalk fries and ice cream, from a small choice that partly closes out of season. For more range you drive to Rehoboth Beach.

New York is one of the great food cities. You can eat Fujianese in Flushing, Tibetan in Jackson Heights and Italian on Arthur Avenue, then finish with a slice of pizza or a pastrami sandwich, and there is serious fine dining above all that. Food can be a reason to go in itself.

Sightseeing in Bethany Beach comes down to a carved totem pole, a small local history collection and the wartime observation towers along the shore. Anyone wanting museums has to drive away for them.

New York could take weeks: the Met, MoMA, the Natural History Museum and the Cloisters, plus the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Central and the brownstone and cast-iron streets that show the city's nineteenth and twentieth century past.

Bethany Beach calls itself the Quiet Resort, and evenings mean a stroll and an early night. Anyone wanting a late night drives to the beach bars of Dewey Beach or Ocean City.

New York runs all night. You can choose between dive bars in the East Village, wine bars in the West Village, rooftop bars in Midtown and warehouse parties in Bushwick that go on past dawn, with trains running to get you home.

New York has a slight edge, mainly because it offers proper hiking. Metro-North trains reach the steep climbs of Breakneck Ridge in about ninety minutes, and Central Park, Prospect Park and Jamaica Bay's birdlife are right in the city.

Bethany Beach's outdoors is flat and gentle: kayaking on the Inland Bays, crabbing, cycling, ospreys over the salt marsh, and Assateague's wild ponies within an hour. It is easier to enjoy than the city's parks but has no hills, and it brings summer mosquitoes.

From Bethany Beach the outings are pleasant and small: historic Lewes, Berlin's Victorian main street, and the ferry across Delaware Bay to Cape May. Each needs a car, and none is a major sight.

New York has more to offer and needs no car for most of it. Philadelphia's Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell are about an hour and a half away by train, and Princeton, Yale's New Haven, the Hudson Valley estates and Dia Beacon are all easy outings.

Both work well with children, but in very different ways. Bethany Beach is about simple routine: a guarded beach, bike rides, crabbing and free evening concerts at the bandstand in a small, safe town. It has no zoo or aquarium, though.

New York offers the big attractions instead: the dinosaur halls at the Natural History Museum, the Bronx Zoo, the aquarium at Coney Island and the free Staten Island Ferry. The cost is subway stairs with a pushchair, small hotel rooms and tiring crowds.

Inside Bethany Beach you can walk or cycle everywhere, but nearly everything beyond the town needs a car. There is no rail link, and summer weekends bring heavy traffic on the coast highway.

New York is far easier to get around without a car. Manhattan's grid is easy to walk, the subway runs day and night, and ferries and bike-share fill the gaps. The airport transfers and stifling summer stations are the main irritations.

Shopping in Bethany Beach is a short street of surf shops, gift stores and bookshops. The real draw is the outlet malls outside Rehoboth Beach, where Delaware's lack of sales tax helps.

New York is a shopping trip in its own right. It has the flagship stores on Fifth Avenue, luxury houses on Madison Avenue, the grand department stores, fashion brands in SoHo, and vintage, records and young designers in Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

Neither is cheap in summer, but Bethany Beach is easier on the budget. A weekly rental shared among a family, cooking for yourself, free beaches and no sales tax all help, and June and September cost much less than high summer.

New York is expensive all year. Hotel rooms are small and costly, and tax and a tip are added to every restaurant bill. You can cut costs by eating slices and Queens food and by staying in Brooklyn, but it stays a costly trip.

In Bethany Beach, live music means free summer concerts at the bandstand, and the nearest theatre is a small community stage in Rehoboth Beach.

New York has more live performance than almost anywhere. There is Broadway and Off-Broadway, the Met Opera, the Philharmonic and the City Ballet at Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall. Jazz plays in the Village and Harlem, gospel fills Harlem churches on Sunday, and in summer there is free Shakespeare in the parks.

New York comes out ahead for anyone who wants to be pampered. It has a Russian and Turkish bathhouse in the East Village dating from the late 1800s, banyas in Brighton Beach, Korean-style spas a short trip away and luxury hotel spas. Outside those, though, the city is loud and fast.

Bethany Beach has no spa tradition, only a few massage studios. What it gives instead is quiet: leafy streets, the sound of surf, and near silence in spring and autumn, which suits reading and long walks more than treatments.