Cape Town or Stone Town?

These two are broadly level, but in very different ways. Cape Town's Atlantic coves at Clifton and Camps Bay are spectacular, with white sand and granite boulders, but the water is cold, so real swimming means the half-hour trip to False Bay in summer.

Stone Town has no beach of its own worth a towel, yet the sea is warm all year. Nakupenda sandbank and the islets offshore are a short boat ride away, and Nungwi, Kendwa and Paje are an hour or more by road. In Cape Town you go to look at the beaches. In Stone Town you get in the water, though you have to travel to reach it.

Cape Town eats more widely and more ambitiously. Cape Malay curries and bobotie from the Bo-Kaap sit alongside tasting menus on Bree Street and in Woodstock, fish by the harbour at Kalk Bay, and wine from estates less than an hour away.

Stone Town's Swahili cooking, heavy with clove and cardamom, has real character, and the evening grill stalls at Forodhani Gardens are a highlight. Beyond that, menus tend to repeat the same dishes, and alcohol is mostly limited to hotels. Oddly, Stone Town is the better place for street-food grazing, which Cape Town largely lacks.

Cape Town's sightseeing is spread out and shaped by a hard history. Robben Island is a ferry ride from the Waterfront, the District Six Museum tells of the removals under apartheid, and the Castle of Good Hope survives from the Dutch East India Company's first settlement. Zeitz MOCAA, in its converted grain silo, adds a serious museum of contemporary African art that Stone Town has nothing to match.

Stone Town still comes out ahead, because the town itself is the monument. Its UNESCO-listed maze of coral-stone houses, mosques and brass-studded carved doors rewards simple wandering. The Old Fort, the Palace Museum and the cathedral on the site of the last open slave market are all a few minutes' walk apart. The museums are modest and two days covers them, but here you are inside a whole historic town, while Cape Town's colonial past survives only in fragments.

There is little contest here. Cape Town has Long Street's rowdy bars and clubs, cocktail and wine bars on Bree and Kloof Streets, De Waterkant's gay quarter and the summer sundowner habit, all best reached by ride-hailing rather than on foot.

Stone Town's evenings end with a rooftop drink at sunset and dinner at the night market. It is a conservative Muslim town where the lanes go quiet early, and anyone who wants to party heads north to Nungwi.

Cape Town is one of the great cities for the outdoors. Table Mountain rises over the centre, and the fynbos-covered national park runs to Cape Point. Add penguins, seals, whales in False Bay, surfing at Muizenberg and kitesurfing on the Atlantic side.

On flat Zanzibar, nature means the sea and the forest. There are red colobus monkeys in Jozani Forest, snorkelling around Mnemba and dolphin boats from Kizimkazi, but there is little for walkers, and the heat confines activity to the cooler hours.

Cape Town has far more to offer beyond the city. The Winelands alone, with Stellenbosch's oak-lined streets, Franschhoek's valley and hundreds of estates, can fill several days, and whale-watching at Hermanus and Tulbagh's Cape Dutch street add more. You will need a car or a tour for nearly all of them.

From Stone Town the outings are short ones on the same island: a spice farm, the tortoises of Prison Island, the sultans' ruined palaces and the slave chambers at Mangapwani. They are good half days, but there is no second town to visit.

Cape Town gives children much more to do: the Two Oceans Aquarium, the cableway, Boulders' penguins, Kirstenbosch's lawns and treetop walkway, and warm tidal pools at St James. The catch is that you will need a car.

Stone Town has a few lovely moments, such as giant tortoises, sandbanks and monkeys at Jozani. But its tight lanes defeat pushchairs, the heat is tiring and malaria needs care, so most families move quickly on to a beach hotel.

Neither is easy, and they are hard in opposite ways. Cape Town's centre is walkable by day, but most of what visitors come for is spread across the peninsula and the Winelands. That means driving on good roads or using cheap ride-hailing, and going door to door after dark.

Stone Town's old town can be crossed on foot in twenty minutes, and most of its lanes are too narrow for cars, so walking is the only sensible way through. It is a genuine labyrinth, though, and the touts are persistent. To get beyond it you need taxis or hired drivers, because the shared dala-dalas are hard for a newcomer to read.

Cape Town has the broader choice: the V&A Waterfront mall, local designers, ceramics and leather in Woodstock and on Kloof Street, and wine to carry home. Stone Town sells crafts in the lanes off Gizenga Street, such as kanga cloth, Zanzibar chests and Tingatinga paintings, much of it repeated from shop to shop. Its spices from the Darajani market are the more memorable souvenir.

Cape Town is the better value for most visitors. Restaurant meals, wine, car hire and ride-hailing are cheap by northern standards, and only rooms in the beach suburbs at the December peak strain the budget.

Stone Town is cheap only at street level. Night-market food, dala-dalas and simple guesthouses cost little, but boutique hotels, alcohol and organised boat and spice tours are priced for foreigners, and you will be bargaining over most fares.

Each city has a sound of its own, but only Cape Town has a regular stage life around it. Cape jazz, the style Abdullah Ibrahim carried abroad, survives in a few clubs. The summer Sunday concerts on Kirstenbosch's lawns are a picnic ritual, and the international jazz festival is a major event. Artscape, the Baxter and the Cape Philharmonic add opera, drama and a concert season.

Stone Town's taarab, Swahili poetry set to violin, qanun and oud, is the rarer thing to hear, but you will need to ask around to catch one of the old music clubs rehearsing. Sauti za Busara and the film festival fill the town for their weeks. Outside them there is no regular programme.

Neither city has a living bathing culture, but Cape Town is the more restful stay. It offers long Winelands lunches, morning dips in the False Bay tidal pools, Kalk Bay's slow pace and well-priced estate spas.

Stone Town's pole pole rhythm and shaded rooftops are appealing, and hotel spas use clove and coconut oil. The heat, motorbikes and touts in the lanes wear people out, though, which is why many save real rest for the coast.