Bethany Beach or Washington DC?

Bethany Beach is built around its sand. A broad strip with lifeguards runs in front of the town with a short boardwalk behind it. The dunes of Delaware Seashore State Park, quiet Fenwick Island and the busier beaches of Ocean City are all within half an hour, and the Inland Bays have calm water for small children.

Washington has nothing like it. Its rivers are for paddling, not swimming, and the small brackish beaches of the Chesapeake around Annapolis are an hour away. The Atlantic shore, Bethany Beach included, is about three hours' drive, so a summer swim in the capital usually means a hotel pool.

Food in Bethany Beach is the seaside kind: steamed crabs on paper-covered tables, fried clams, boardwalk fries and ice cream, with sweet corn and peaches from the farm stands inland. It is fun for a week but the choice is narrow, and for more variety you drive to Rehoboth Beach.

Washington gives you far more to try. There are Ethiopian restaurants around Shaw and U Street, pupusas in Columbia Heights, the half-smoke, the old fish market on the Southwest waterfront, grazing at Eastern Market and Union Market, and tasting menus around Logan Circle. Both serve blue crabs in summer, but only Washington lets you eat somewhere quite different every night.

The gap between the two is widest here. Bethany Beach has a carved totem pole, a small history collection about the church camp the town grew from and the Second World War watchtowers along the shore. That is an afternoon at most.

Washington can fill a week with the Smithsonian museums on the Mall, the National Gallery of Art, the Capitol, the memorials around the Reflecting Pool, the Library of Congress and Arlington Cemetery. Almost all of it is free, so you can drop into a museum for an hour without a second thought.

Going out in Bethany Beach rarely means more than a drink with dinner. The town has no bar street and is quiet on purpose. For a late night you drive about 20 minutes north to the packed summer beach bars of Dewey Beach, or south to Ocean City, so someone in the group has to stay sober to drive back.

Washington gives you a real choice of nights out without getting in a car. From Thursday to Saturday the cocktail bars and rooftops of 14th Street and U Street stay busy well past midnight. Adams Morgan is the rowdier late strip, H Street has the dive bars, the Wharf has riverside beer gardens and Dupont Circle is the centre of LGBTQ+ nightlife. Early in the week it is mostly after-work drinks.

The outdoors at Bethany Beach is flat and gentle. You can kayak and paddleboard on the Inland Bays, go crabbing off the docks and cycle coastal paths past herons and ospreys, and Assateague's wild ponies are under an hour south. It is easy summer fun, though the mosquitoes come with it.

Washington has more range. Rock Creek Park and the C&O Canal towpath start inside the city, Great Falls has a rocky gorge with climbing and whitewater kayaking, and the ridge hikes of Shenandoah are within a morning's drive. For anything with hills or real effort, the capital is the better base.

The outings from Bethany Beach are pleasant and small in scale. You can visit the historic port of Lewes, take the ferry to Victorian Cape May, or see Berlin's old main street and Chincoteague's island village. Each makes a relaxed day, but none is a must-see.

Washington sits in the middle of some of the country's most important history. Old Town Alexandria and Mount Vernon are close by, and Baltimore is a short train ride away. Gettysburg, Antietam, Harpers Ferry and Philadelphia's Independence Hall each make a full day out.

Both are good with children, in very different ways. Bethany Beach is the classic easy family week: a guarded beach, bike rides, crabbing and free evenings at the bandstand. It has no zoo or big attraction, though, and most of it closes outside summer.

Washington comes out slightly ahead because there is more to do. Children get the dinosaurs at Natural History, the rockets at Air and Space and the pandas' home at the National Zoo, all of it free, and every Metro station has lifts for buggies. The downside is long, hot walks across the Mall in summer, with no beach to escape to.

Once you are in Bethany Beach you can walk or cycle everywhere, and many visitors leave the car parked all week. Getting there, food shopping and every day trip still mean driving, with only a seasonal bus and heavy summer traffic on the coast highway.

In Washington you need no car at all for a city stay. The Metro reaches most sights as well as Arlington, Alexandria and the airport, bike-share docks are everywhere, and the flat grid is good for walking. Georgetown has no station, though, and distances are longer than the map suggests.

In Bethany Beach itself, shopping means a handful of surf shops, gift stores and bookshops. The real draw is the outlet malls outside Rehoboth Beach, helped by Delaware's tax-free shopping. Washington has more to browse, with boutiques and antique shops in Georgetown's old brick buildings, luxury labels at CityCenterDC, weekend stalls at Eastern Market and some excellent museum shops.

Neither is cheap, but the costs fall in different places. In Bethany Beach the big expense is a beach rental in July and August. Prices drop sharply in June, September and the off-season, and self-catering, free beach access and the absence of sales tax help.

Washington is expensive all year for hotels, restaurants and taxis, but almost all of its sightseeing is free, so once the room is paid for a day out costs little. A family cooking for itself does well on the coast in the shoulder months. A sightseer staying out in Arlington gets better value in the capital.

In Bethany Beach the stage is the bandstand by the boardwalk, where cover bands and brass groups give free summer concerts to families on blankets. Beyond that there is only Rehoboth's community theatre and its autumn jazz festival.

Washington is a real theatre city. It has Arena Stage, the Shakespeare Theatre Company, the Folger's Elizabethan-style playhouse and Ford's Theatre, plus the National Symphony Orchestra and the opera. Live music ranges from the restored Lincoln and Howard theatres on U Street to local go-go shows and summer concerts on the lawn at Wolf Trap.

Neither place has a bathing or spa tradition, so the real difference is the pace. Bethany Beach is the better place to unwind. It has leafy residential streets and a calm evening boardwalk where you hear little but the surf, and in spring and autumn the town is almost silent.

Washington keeps to the rhythm of a working government town. It has hotel spas and yoga studios, but for real quiet you have to seek out the gardens at Dumbarton Oaks, the National Arboretum or the Tidal Basin early in the morning.