Branson or St. Louis?

Neither city has a coast, but Branson does have a real summer swim. Table Rock Lake warms up nicely from June to early September, with swim areas of brought-in sand and rented pontoons in wooded coves.

St. Louis has only working rivers with strong currents. Cooling off there means a pool, or a long drive south to those same Ozark lakes.

Branson feeds you well enough for a day of shows, and not much more. Expect buffets, fried chicken, catfish, barbecue and national chains along Highway 76, with a set meal at the dinner theatres. The local flavour comes from the Ozarks: skillet cooking, cinnamon bread, fudge and trout from the cold lake.

St. Louis eats better and with more character. Toasted ravioli, cracker-thin pizza with Provel cheese, gooey butter cake and frozen custard on old Route 66 are its own, and the Hill's trattorias and the Bosnian and Vietnamese places on South Grand add range. With the Saturday Soulard Market and a brewing tradition centred on the red-brick Anheuser-Busch brewery, you eat well and cheaply, even if few visitors come for the food alone.

Branson's sights are entertainment: wax museums and novelty galleries on the strip. Its nearest thing to heritage is Ozarks folk crafts at the 1880s-themed park and the varied Ralph Foster Museum at College of the Ozarks.

St. Louis has real history and architecture. The Gateway Arch and its museum of westward expansion, the Old Courthouse where the Dred Scott case began, the free collections in Forest Park, the Wainwright Building, an early landmark of the skyscraper, and whole Victorian streets in Soulard and Lafayette Square easily fill two or three days.

In Branson the evening ends when the show does. A few brewpubs and hotel lounges around Branson Landing serve families and older couples on their way back to their rooms.

St. Louis has a real night out, though it is spread across the city. There are corner taverns and blues bars in Soulard, dance bars on Washington Avenue, the Grove for LGBTQ+ and late nights, and a student crowd on the Delmar Loop. You will need taxis between them, and weeknights outside baseball season are quiet.

Branson sits right in the Ozarks, and that is its advantage. You can paddle on Table Rock Lake, fish for trout below the dam or walk the glades of Hercules Glades all from your base, and the tall bluffs of the Buffalo National River are a two-hour drive away.

St. Louis has the large, wooded Forest Park and gentler country within an hour: river bluffs and caves at Castlewood and Meramec, the Katy Trail for cyclists and bald eagles in winter near Alton. The land there rolls rather than rises.

Branson's best outings are Eureka Springs, a Victorian spa town on steep streets, and Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, a fine museum of American art set in woodland. After those two the list thins quickly.

St. Louis has more to choose from, including a site of world rank: the UNESCO-listed Cahokia Mounds, twenty minutes across the river. Add French colonial Ste. Genevieve, the German wine towns of Hermann and Augusta, Mark Twain's Hannibal and Lincoln's Springfield. You need a car for nearly all of them, from either city.

Both cities are good with children, but Branson builds the whole town around them. The Ozarks theme park, the water parks, the showboat on Table Rock Lake, the dinner shows with horses and stunts and the lake days on a pontoon easily fill a week, and every hotel expects families.

St. Louis has fewer attractions, but some stand out: the climbable maze of the City Museum, the free zoo and Science Center in Forest Park, the Magic House and the tram pods up the Arch. It suits a shorter stay that mixes children's sights with grown-up city time.

You need a car in both, but Branson is the harder place to get around. Its theatres and hotels are strung along Highway 76 over hilly kilometres, the pavements are patchy and evening traffic crawls. Only Branson Landing and the small old downtown are walkable.

St. Louis at least has MetroLink, which links the airport, Forest Park, downtown and the stadium, and its roads are uncongested with easy parking. Soulard, the Hill and South Grand still need a drive or a taxi.

Shopping is modest in both, but the kind is different. Branson means outlet malls, the mainstream stores at Branson Landing and Ozark crafts such as hand-blown glass, quilts and woodcarving, often made in front of you. St. Louis is better for browsing independent shops, with antiques, vintage and records on Cherokee Street, student shops on the Delmar Loop and boutiques in the Central West End, while the big brands are out in suburban malls.

Overall costs come out much the same, but the money goes in different places. In Branson, motels, condos and lake cabins are cheap to sleep in, and then show tickets, park entries and boat hire add up across the stay.

In St. Louis the main sights cost nothing: the zoo, the art museum, the history museum and the science centre in Forest Park are all free. Barbecue and Bosnian grills keep meals cheap. Plan for a hire car in either city.

Live performance is a good reason to visit either city, but the kind is very different. Branson is one long run of shows from morning to night: country and bluegrass family acts, gospel quartets, tribute acts, magicians and biblical spectacles with live animals. They are polished and wholesome, but narrow in range.

St. Louis offers the range Branson lacks. It has a symphony founded in 1880 in Powell Hall, touring Broadway at the Fox, summer musicals outdoors at the Muny, an opera festival and the blues heritage of Chuck Berry and W.C. Handy, which lives on in the bars of downtown and Soulard.

Neither city is a wellness destination, but Branson offers the better chance of a quiet few days if you stay out by the lake. Lodge resorts on Table Rock have full spas, and a cabin on a wooded cove is genuinely peaceful.

St. Louis has hotel spas and day spas in Clayton and the Central West End. Its most restful moments come free: an unhurried morning in Forest Park or in the Japanese garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden.