Boston or Philadelphia?

Neither city is a beach destination, but the beaches work differently. In Boston the sand is close: Revere Beach is a subway ride out and there are small harbour beaches in South Boston and Dorchester, with dune-backed Crane Beach on the North Shore. The catch is the Atlantic here, which stays cold even in August.

Philadelphia has no swimming at all within the city, so a beach day means driving to the Jersey Shore, an hour and more each way with weekend traffic. In return the sand is wider and the late-summer water noticeably warmer, so it feels like a real swim rather than a quick dip.

The two eat equally well but taste nothing alike. Boston is a seafood city: Duxbury and Wellfleet oysters, fried clams, chowder and lobster rolls, plus red-sauce dining and cannoli in the North End and ambitious New England cooking in Cambridge and the South End. Away from the sea, though, little is distinctly local, and every meal costs a lot.

Philadelphia's identity is in its sandwiches, the cheesesteak, roast pork with broccoli rabe and the hoagie, eaten from corner delis, with Reading Terminal Market and the Italian Market as the places to graze. Its bring-your-own-wine dining rooms and the Mexican and Vietnamese cooking of East Passyunk and Fishtown make dinner more relaxed and less costly.

These are the two great cities of America's founding, and they are equally rewarding, but they tell the story differently. Boston spreads its history along the Freedom Trail from the Common to the USS Constitution, and adds the nineteenth-century streets of Beacon Hill and Back Bay, the encyclopaedic Museum of Fine Arts, the singular Gardner Museum and the Harvard campus.

Philadelphia gathers its history in a few blocks of Old City, where Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell stand near Elfreth's Alley and Society Hill's Georgian rowhouses. Its museums lean towards painting and the curious: the Impressionists of the Barnes, the Philadelphia Museum of Art on the Parkway, the Mütter Museum's medical oddities and the empty cellblocks of Eastern State Penitentiary.

Both are bar cities with a 2am last call and few clubs, but Philadelphia makes the better night out. Fishtown and Northern Liberties have converted warehouses, dive bars and beer halls, Rittenhouse Square has cocktails, and the Gayborhood is one of the country's older LGBTQ+ districts.

Boston's evenings run to Irish pubs around Faneuil Hall, sports bars packed on Fenway game nights and student bars in Allston and Cambridge. It is a fine place for a long pub evening, but the subway stops soon after midnight, which makes getting home awkward and tends to end the night earlier.

Boston has more to do outdoors, largely because it is on the sea. Beyond the Emerald Necklace parks and kayaking on the Charles, you can take a summer ferry to the forts and trails of the Harbor Islands, go whale-watching for humpbacks at Stellwagen Bank, or walk the rocky Cape Ann shore and the woods around Walden Pond.

Philadelphia's best is inside the city: the Wissahickon gorge in Fairmount Park, with trails above the creek, and the Schuylkill River Trail past Boathouse Row towards Valley Forge. Beyond that the country is gentle, with the Pine Barrens an hour away and the Poconos only just within reach for a day.

Philadelphia wins thanks to the rail corridor. New York, Baltimore and Washington are all a fast train away, and each fills a day on its own, with Princeton, Amish Lancaster County, Valley Forge and the Brandywine gardens closer in. Gettysburg and Cape May need a car.

Boston's day trips are more of a piece, a ring of old New England towns. Salem and Concord are easy by commuter rail, Lexington pairs the first battlefields with the houses of Emerson and Alcott, and Plymouth, the North Shore fishing towns and Newport's cliffside mansions make a long list. What you won't find is another big city as an easy day trip.

Both cities are easy with children, with a different mix of attractions. Boston keeps its big draws on the water: the New England Aquarium, the Museum of Science on the Charles and the Children's Museum, plus swan boats in the Public Garden and whale-watching trips that young children remember.

Philadelphia relies on its science museums, with the walk-through heart at the Franklin Institute, the Please Touch Museum for under-eights and the dinosaur hall at the Academy of Natural Sciences, along with the country's oldest zoo. It also has a Sesame Street theme park within an hour, which Boston lacks.

You can walk either city with little need for transport, though the layouts feel quite different. Boston's old, twisting centre packs the North End, Beacon Hill, Back Bay and the waterfront close together, and the T and harbour ferries reach Cambridge, Charlestown and the islands, although some lines are slow and service ends around midnight.

Philadelphia's flat grid between its two rivers is simpler to navigate, and SEPTA's regional rail runs straight to the airport. Its stations are plainer and rougher than Boston's, but in either city a car is more trouble than help until you head out of town.

Boston puts its best shopping on one handsome street, while Philadelphia scatters its own across several neighbourhoods. Newbury Street runs through Back Bay as eight blocks of brownstones, with independent boutiques and galleries alongside the fashion flagships, and the Copley Place and Prudential Center malls nearby for department stores and luxury labels. Charles Street adds antiques and Harvard Square adds bookshops, and clothing is free of sales tax up to a set amount.

Philadelphia's Walnut Street around Rittenhouse Square is mostly national brands. The more interesting buying is elsewhere: the diamond dealers of Jewelers' Row, the independents of Old City and Fishtown, food gifts at Reading Terminal and cheeses and cookware in the Italian Market. For sheer size, the King of Prussia mall is half an hour's drive away, and clothing carries no sales tax at all.

Philadelphia is clearly the cheaper of the two, though by international standards it is still not cheap. Its hotels charge ordinary American rates, the Independence Park sights cost nothing, and sandwich lunches and bring-your-own-wine dinners keep food spending in check.

Boston is a different matter. Its hotel rooms are among the most expensive in the country, and even casual seafood comes with a high bill. The free Freedom Trail and the parks help, as does staying out along a subway line, but there is no cheap way to do Boston.

For classical music the two are equals, each with one of America's great orchestras. Boston's is heard in Symphony Hall, whose acoustics are famous, with the Pops on the Esplanade and early music from the Handel and Haydn Society, while Berklee and conservatory students fill small jazz rooms. Opera is its one weak spot.

Opera is exactly where Philadelphia does better, at the richly decorated Academy of Music, with Curtis Institute recitals nearby. In the theatre, Boston's American Repertory Theater sends premieres to New York, while Philadelphia has the Walnut Street Theatre, the oldest working theatre in the country, and more rock and indie stages.

Neither city is a place for a restful break, and both leave you with hotel and day spas. Boston's calm spots are the Public Garden, the shaded Esplanade and the Arnold Arboretum, and visitors who want real rest leave for an inn on Cape Ann or Cape Cod.

Philadelphia feels gruffer, but it has one thing Boston lacks: Korean-style bathhouses in the suburbs. Closer in, a walk in the Wissahickon gorge or a bench in one of Penn's leafy squares is the city's way to slow down.