Boca Raton or Palm Beach?

The sea is the same in both: clear, warm Atlantic water that you can swim in all year. The difference is how you reach it. Boca Raton's ocean front is a chain of public parks. Red Reef Park has a reef you can snorkel from the sand, and Spanish River Park has sea grape shade and dunes in front of low-rise building.

On Palm Beach island, much of the shore sits behind seawalls and private estates, and some stretches narrow at high tide, so most visitors use the Municipal Beach or Phipps Ocean Park. Its standout is Peanut Island in the inlet, where calm, shallow water is a gentle place for families and first snorkels.

Neither town is a food destination. Both serve grouper, stone crab in season and Key lime pie in comfortable, upmarket rooms. Boca Raton's own touch is its Jewish delis and bagel bakeries, and most of its dining is in Mizner Park and the roadside plazas.

Palm Beach is more formal on the island, with French and Italian dining rooms and dress codes taken seriously. Across the bridge, West Palm Beach adds Cuban bakeries, Caribbean takeaways and a weekend green market on the waterfront, which gives you a little more variety within easy reach.

Palm Beach has noticeably more to see. Flagler's marble Whitehall is a real anchor, Mizner's tiled vias and Bethesda-by-the-Sea shape the streets, and the Norton Museum across the lagoon has a collection worth a long visit. The drive past the estates on South Ocean Boulevard is a sight in itself.

Boca Raton shares the Mizner style through its Old Town Hall and the pink-towered hotel, and it has a modest art museum. Its most memorable visit, the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, lies just outside town, and a culture-minded visitor here ends up driving to Palm Beach anyway.

Both are early-to-bed resort towns, and the difference is where the livelier night sits. In Boca Raton, evenings are wine bars and terraces around Mizner Park, plus a few casual student bars near Florida Atlantic University. For anything later you drive fifteen minutes to Delray Beach's Atlantic Avenue.

Palm Beach island is quieter still, with a grand hotel bar and private clubs you cannot enter. Just over the bridge, though, Clematis Street in West Palm Beach has rooftop terraces and a couple of dance spots that fill at weekends.

Both towns share the flat coastal landscape and the Loxahatchee refuge's alligators and wading birds inland. Palm Beach does more with the water. The shallow dive under the Blue Heron Bridge is known for octopus and seahorses, the Lake Trail runs for miles along the lagoon, and Jonathan Dickinson State Park offers river paddling. Manatees gather nearby in winter.

Boca Raton's outdoors is gentler: kayaks in the Intracoastal mangroves, the reef just offshore, and Gumbo Limbo's coastal hammock boardwalks and night turtle walks in the nesting season.

The day trips are much the same, a coast of similar resort towns with Miami as the big outing, but the two places sit at different points along it. Boca Raton is in the middle. Palm Beach's Flagler Museum is forty minutes north, Fort Lauderdale is half an hour south, and Miami is an hour away by Brightline or Tri-Rail.

Palm Beach is further from Miami, though the fast train still makes it a comfortable day. In return it has the northern outings close by: Jupiter's red-brick lighthouse and the river town of Stuart.

Both are safe, calm places to bring children, but the day feels different. Boca Raton is relaxed about children everywhere. Gumbo Limbo's sea turtle tanks, the Children's Science Explorium, Sugar Sand Park and the lifeguarded beach parks are all close together.

Palm Beach island itself is built for adults, so family days happen across the bridge: the Palm Beach Zoo's jaguars and panthers, the science centre and aquarium, Manatee Lagoon in winter and the drive-through safari park, which is far nearer here than from Boca.

Palm Beach is the easier of the two without a car. The streets around Worth Avenue are pleasant to walk, the flat island is made for cycling the Lake Trail, and downtown West Palm Beach has a free trolley loop.

Boca Raton is laid out for driving. Apart from the Mizner Park area, its beaches, hotels and shops are strung along wide multi-lane roads. Its own Tri-Rail and Brightline stops are the saving grace, putting Miami and Fort Lauderdale within reach by train.

Palm Beach has the real luxury street. Worth Avenue's major houses and jewellers sit among palm-shaded courtyards, the consignment shops resell designer clothes from local wardrobes, and Antique Row in West Palm Beach adds a long strip of furniture and decorative-arts dealers.

Boca Raton's strength is its big, upscale enclosed mall, which draws shoppers from across the region, along with the open-air boutiques of Mizner Park and Royal Palm Place. It is polished but suburban, and Worth Avenue is the outing its own shoppers make.

Boca Raton is the more affordable of the two, though neither is a budget destination. Its winter rooms and restaurants are expensive, but delis, casual seafood places and self-catering rentals soften the bill. Summer rates drop, and parking at its beach parks is charged.

Palm Beach island is a step above that, with winter room rates far beyond big-city levels. The usual tactic is to stay in West Palm Beach and cross over, and to fill the days with free pleasures like the Lake Trail and window-shopping.

Palm Beach has the region's main stage. The Kravis Center in West Palm Beach hosts touring Broadway musicals, visiting orchestras, ballet and Palm Beach Opera's winter season, Palm Beach Dramaworks puts on serious plays, and the Society of the Four Arts holds chamber concerts.

Boca Raton's offering is smaller and more local: open-air concerts and the Festival of the Arts at the Mizner Park Amphitheater, Broadway-style musicals at a regional theatre and recitals from the Lynn University conservatory. In both towns the programme fades once the winter residents leave.

Neither has a bathing tradition, so rest in both means a resort spa. Palm Beach does it better. The island itself is quiet and slow, with long walks along the lagoon, beach yoga and early sea swims, and its oceanfront resorts have large spas with salt-water pools.

Boca Raton offers the same kind of resort spa plus a spread of day spas and yoga studios. A stay here means pool, massage and early nights in a calm suburban setting, but it lacks the island's sense of being somewhere apart.