Boston or Quebec City?

Neither city is a beach destination, but Boston at least puts sand on the subway. Revere Beach is a few stops out on the Blue Line, and the dunes of Crane Beach and Singing Beach on the North Shore are worth a summer day, even if the Atlantic stays bracing in August.

In Quebec City the St Lawrence is tidal and fast, so the beach at Baie de Beauport is for sunbathing and volleyball, not swimming. To swim you have to drive to lakes such as Lac Saint-Joseph, which are pleasant in July and August but take a car and a plan.

Boston has more range and its seafood is a real draw: oysters from Duxbury and Wellfleet, fried clams and lobster rolls, then cannoli in the North End and dim sum in Chinatown. Cambridge and the South End add more ambitious chef-led cooking, though everything is expensive.

Quebec City's table is narrower and heartier: tourtière, pea soup, poutine and maple everywhere, with sugar-shack feasts in early spring. Its best meals are in the bistros of Saint-Roch and Saint-Jean-Baptiste using cheese, duck and cider from the Île d'Orléans. Inside the walls, the set menus aimed at tourists are hit and miss.

Both have a great deal of history, but of different kinds. Boston's is Revolutionary and Victorian, followed along the Freedom Trail and through the brownstones of Beacon Hill and Back Bay. It also has the deeper museums: the Museum of Fine Arts, the Isabella Stewart Gardner and Harvard's collections across the river.

Quebec City is the better place to stand inside the past. Its walled UNESCO old town, the Citadelle, Place Royale and the clifftop battlefield of 1759 make a single French colonial townscape. Its two main museums are good but fewer, so here you spend more time walking the streets than in galleries.

Evenings out are much the same size in both, and mostly about drinks. Boston's are pub nights: Irish bars around Faneuil Hall and South Boston, crowds around Fenway on game nights and student bars in Allston, all ending by 2am, when the subway has already stopped. Quebec City's bars stay open later and its summer terraces on the Grande Allée feel more like a party, but on a February weeknight the city goes quiet early.

Quebec City has the wilder outdoors. Montmorency Falls is a quarter of an hour from the centre, the glacial valley of Jacques-Cartier offers canoeing and moose in the boreal forest, and the slopes of Mont-Sainte-Anne and Le Massif are within an hour. Winter is a season of cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and ice canoeing in its own right.

Boston's nature is parkland and coast: the Olmsted parks of the Emerald Necklace, sailing on the Charles and ferries to the Harbor Islands. Its stand-out is whale-watching for humpbacks on Stellwagen Bank, and autumn foliage, but there are no mountains closer than New Hampshire.

Boston has the longer and easier list. Salem and Concord are a short commuter-rail ride away, and Lexington's battlefields, Plymouth, the fishing towns of Cape Ann and the Newport mansions can fill a week of outings.

Quebec City's best excursions are close and rural: the orchards and stone churches of the Île d'Orléans, the shrine at Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Wendake and the galleries of Baie-Saint-Paul in Charlevoix. Nearly all need a car, and after those few the choice runs out.

Boston is the more complete family city, with three major institutions built for children (the New England Aquarium, the Museum of Science and the Children's Museum), plus the swan boats in the Public Garden. The flat, compact centre is easy with pushchairs.

Quebec City is at its best for children in winter, with the toboggan run on the Dufferin Terrace, skating rinks and the carnival snowman. Its aquarium has polar bears and walruses, and the cable car at Montmorency Falls makes an easy half day. The steep stairways of the old town and the deep cold make it harder with small children.

Boston is easier to get around. Its central districts sit close together on largely flat ground, and the T, old and slow in places, still links the centre with Cambridge, Fenway and the airport. You can leave the car behind until you head out of town.

Quebec City is walkable too, but the cliff gets in the way: the Breakneck Stairs and the funicular connect upper and lower town, and ice makes the slopes treacherous in winter. With only buses and no rail, the parks, ski hills and the Île d'Orléans really need a car.

Boston has more fashion. Newbury Street's boutiques and flagships, the Copley Place and Prudential malls for luxury labels, and no sales tax on most clothing make it the better place to shop for what you'll wear.

Quebec City is for small, local buys: craft workshops and milliners in Petit-Champlain, antiques along Rue Saint-Paul, and maple, ice cider and Inuit art to take home. It has no luxury fashion worth the name.

Quebec City is clearly the cheaper stay. Neither is a budget destination and both add tax and tip to every meal, but rooms in Saint-Roch or Sainte-Foy are good value and the main sights are free.

In Boston the hotel bill hurts most, especially in foliage season and at graduation time. Even casual seafood costs well above the national average, and while the Freedom Trail and parks are free, a cheap trip here is hard to manage.

Boston has much more to see on stage. The Boston Symphony Orchestra plays its season in Symphony Hall, whose acoustics are among the finest anywhere, the Pops take the Esplanade on the Fourth of July, and the Handel and Haydn Society and Boston Ballet fill out the calendar. The A.R.T. in Cambridge stages premieres bound for New York, and Berklee and Conservatory students add jazz rooms and free concerts.

Quebec City has the oldest symphony orchestra in Canada at the Grand Théâtre and experimental work at Le Diamant, the theatre Robert Lepage created. Opera is a small part of the programme in both cities. Quebec City's big moment is the Festival d'été, with international bands on the Plains of Abraham in July. The rest of the year is quieter, and most theatre is in French.

Quebec City has a real bathing culture of its own. Its Nordic spas, outdoor hot pools, saunas and cold plunges in the forest around Lac-Beauport are at their best when steam rises into deep snow. Slow walks on the Dufferin Terrace and café afternoons in Saint-Jean-Baptiste suit an unhurried stay.

Boston offers hotel and day spas in Back Bay and quiet hours in the Arnold Arboretum, but the city moves at the pace of its universities and hospitals. Bostonians looking to unwind tend to leave for Cape Ann.