Branson or Chicago?

Both cities swim in fresh water rather than the sea, and in both the season runs roughly from June to early September. Chicago has more of it: twenty-odd sandy beaches on Lake Michigan inside the city, some a short walk from the Gold Coast towers, so a swim fits easily between sights.

In Branson the swimming is out on Table Rock Lake, at scattered swim areas often laid with brought-in sand, or from a rented pontoon in a quiet cove, and you drive out to reach it. That water runs warmer than Lake Michigan in high summer. Lake Taneycomo, the lake beside the town, stays too cold for swimming all year.

This is one of the widest gaps between the two cities. Branson's food is there to feed you: buffets, fried chicken, catfish and chain restaurants along Highway 76. The high points are Ozark ones, such as skillet cooking, fudge and fresh trout.

Chicago has its own street canon of deep-dish and tavern-cut pizza, Italian beef and the fully dressed hot dog, plus a fine-dining row on Randolph Street. Whole neighbourhoods serve Mexican, South Asian, Vietnamese and Polish cooking, so food can shape the whole itinerary.

Branson's sights are amusements: wax museums, a museum shaped like an ocean liner's bow and assorted novelty galleries. The nearest it comes to heritage is the frontier crafts at the 1880s-themed park and the Ralph Foster Museum at College of the Ozarks.

Chicago is where the skyscraper came of age, and a river cruise past the Loop's early steel-frame towers and the glass of Mies van der Rohe makes a lesson in modern architecture. Add the Art Institute's Impressionists, the Museum Campus and Frank Lloyd Wright's houses in Oak Park and Hyde Park, and there is more than one stay can hold.

Branson closes when the last show lets out, and a brewpub by the lakefront shops or a hotel lounge is about as far as an evening goes. Chicago keeps going until 4am in many bars. It has dive bars and cocktail bars in Wicker Park and Logan Square, dance clubs in River North that carry on the city's house-music tradition, and the gay district in Northalsted. If you want a night out, Chicago is the only real choice.

Branson has the better outdoors because it sits in varied country: forested Ozark ridges, limestone bluffs, caves and the wooded coves of Table Rock Lake for kayaking and bass fishing. Hercules Glades has good walking, the Buffalo National River is about two hours south, and the hills are at their best with spring dogwood and autumn colour.

Chicago's nature is its lakefront. A shoreline path of about 29km is good for cycling and walking, and the parks have lagoons and birding on a migration route. Beyond the city the land is flat, and Indiana Dunes is the nearest real escape, about an hour away.

Neither city makes a strong base for excursions, but the outings differ in kind. From Branson they are small-town and rural, and all by car: Victorian Eureka Springs on its steep streets, the Crystal Bridges art museum in its woodland at Bentonville, and the Civil War battlefield at Wilson's Creek.

From Chicago, Milwaukee is an easy train ride and Oak Park's Wright houses are on the edge of the city. With a car you can add the lakeside mansions of Lake Geneva or the harbour towns of southwest Michigan. Chicago's outings lean urban and Branson's lean Ozark.

Both are excellent with children, in different ways. Branson is built for families: a theme park in the hills with roller coasters, plus water parks, a paddlewheel showboat, zip lines, go-karts and dinner shows with horses. All of it assumes you have a car and can cope with the July heat.

Chicago's appeal is big and educational: the coal mine and U-boat at the Museum of Science and Industry, dinosaurs at the Field Museum, belugas at the Shedd and a free zoo in Lincoln Park. Chicago offers lifeguarded city beaches, while Branson has the rides.

In Branson every part of the day is its own drive. The theme park in the morning, a swim on Table Rock Lake in the afternoon and a show in the evening are all separate trips, usually starting from Springfield airport in a hire car. Walking between theatres on the strip isn't practical. In the evening rush it helps to learn the colour-coded back roads the locals use, or to leave plenty of time before curtain-up.

Chicago works the other way round, and it is much the easier city to get around. The things most visitors come for sit close together downtown, and trains and buses cover the rest, so a car would only get in the way. The time goes on distance instead. Dinner in an outlying neighbourhood can mean a long bus ride along one of the straight avenues, but in summer a river water taxi or a hire bike along the lake turns the journey into part of the day.

Chicago is the real shopping city. It has flagships and vertical malls along the Magnificent Mile, luxury labels on Oak Street, the Tiffany ceiling of the old Marshall Field's store on State Street, and independent boutiques and record shops in Wicker Park and Andersonville.

Branson has outlet malls and mainstream chains at Branson Landing, but its distinctive side is handmade: blown glass, quilts, pottery and ironwork, often made while you watch. Chicago has little in the way of local crafts, so this is the one area where Branson offers something it cannot.

Branson costs less, mainly because rooms are cheap: motels, condos and lake cabins are plentiful, and buffets keep meals modest. The catch is that a hire car, show tickets and park entry add up over a week, so it is a mid-priced trip rather than a budget one.

Chicago is the dearer stay, with expensive downtown hotels and high taxes on every bill. It saves you money in other ways: you need no car, the L is good value, and the lakefront, the beaches, Millennium Park and Lincoln Park Zoo are free.

Branson puts on a great many shows of a single kind, while Chicago covers almost the whole range of live performance. Branson's theatres along Highway 76 run from morning to evening with country and gospel acts, variety revues, tribute shows and large biblical productions, polished and often very well played. For opera, serious drama or classical music it has almost nothing.

Chicago has a world-class symphony, a full season at the Lyric Opera, the Goodman, Steppenwolf, dozens of storefront companies and improv every night at Second City. Its own music carries on in the blues and jazz clubs and, in summer, at free concerts in the Pritzker Pavilion. Unless country and gospel are exactly what you want, Chicago gives you the better evenings out.

Neither is a place people come to rest, so the difference is in how you find some calm. In Branson it depends on where you stay: a lodge spa or a cabin on a wooded Table Rock cove, well away from the neon of the strip.

Chicago has a small bathing culture of its own. There is a steam-and-cold-plunge bathhouse in Wicker Park dating from the early 1900s, a Korean-style jjimjilbang in the northern suburbs, and the warm conservatory glasshouses make a good refuge on a winter afternoon.