Charleston or Daytona Beach?

Daytona Beach is built around its sand: one unbroken stretch of wide, firm beach along the barrier island, with the pier and boardwalk at the busy centre and quieter stretches towards Ormond Beach and Ponce Inlet. You can step out of a motel straight onto it, and cars are even allowed on marked sections.

Charleston's beaches are good but lie away from the town, a drive or a ride out to Folly Beach, Sullivan's Island or Isle of Palms, each with its own character. The water is much the same off both, greenish and tidal with rip currents, so the real difference is how much of the trip the beach takes up.

Both towns live on seafood, but Charleston turns it into a cuisine. Lowcountry dishes such as shrimp and grits, she-crab soup and Carolina Gold rice carry Gullah Geechee and West African roots, and they are cooked with real care in restored townhouses around King Street and the French Quarter. Add winter oyster roasts and whole-hog barbecue, and a Charleston trip can be planned around where you eat.

Daytona's seafood is plainer: a grouper sandwich or a basket of fried shrimp on a deck over the Halifax River or down by Ponce Inlet. Away from those old fish camps, the choice shrinks to chain restaurants along the main roads. The upside is ease. Charleston's best dining rooms have to be reserved long before you arrive and it has few cheap fallbacks, while in Daytona you can simply turn up.

In Charleston the whole historic peninsula is the sight: Rainbow Row, the Battery, the single houses south of Broad Street, and house museums such as the Nathaniel Russell and Aiken-Rhett houses, which show both the grand rooms and the quarters of the enslaved. Fort Sumter and the International African American Museum give the city's history real weight.

Daytona's culture is about speed. The Speedway tour, the Museum of Arts and Sciences with its Cuban art, and the climb up the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse make a good day, but there is no old town to wander and a sightseer soon runs out of things to see.

Neither town is worth going to for its nights out, and both are about bars rather than clubs. Charleston's evenings centre on the rooftop bars, cocktail rooms and oyster bars of upper King Street, which are loud with students and groups at weekends, while the French Quarter has quieter wine bars and old taverns.

Daytona's bars are mostly tiki decks, sports bars and the biker saloons of Main Street, which only really fill up during Bike Week, Biketoberfest and race weeks. Go to Charleston for a cocktail and to Daytona for a beer among the motorcycles.

Both towns sit on flat, watery coast with no hills, and both are best explored by kayak, with dolphins a likely sight in either. Charleston's landscape is spartina marsh, tidal creeks and live-oak forest, with alligators and birdlife in the ACE Basin and Francis Marion National Forest.

Daytona has a little more variety: the undeveloped dunes of Canaveral National Seashore, some of Florida's best birding at Merritt Island, manatees wintering at Blue Spring and surf near Ponce Inlet. In both places, summer heat makes early mornings or the cooler seasons the time to be outdoors.

Both are good bases if you have a car, but the outings differ in kind. From Charleston they are mostly about Southern history: the Ashley River plantations such as Middleton Place and Drayton Hall, McLeod Plantation, Gullah culture around Beaufort and a full day among Savannah's squares.

Daytona's outings cover a wider range: colonial St Augustine to the north, the rockets of Kennedy Space Center to the south, and Orlando's theme parks or quieter Winter Park inland, each about an hour away.

Both work for families, in different ways. Charleston suits school-age children who will enjoy the aquarium, climbing around the aircraft carrier at Patriots Point and the boat to Fort Sumter, with gentle beaches for the rest of the stay, though house tours will test small children.

Daytona is the simpler beach vacation, with arcades, rides and ice cream by the boardwalk, condos with kitchens and pools, and Orlando's theme parks within an hour. Its rip currents and crowded event weeks need some planning around.

Charleston's historic peninsula is flat and compact enough to walk, with pedicabs and a free shuttle bus to fill the gaps, so the car can stay parked while you are in town. You still need one, or ride-hailing, for the beaches and plantations.

In Daytona you need a car almost from the start. Sights, hotels and restaurants are spread along wide roads on both sides of the river and buses are infrequent. Only the beach itself and the short stretch around the boardwalk work well on foot or by bike.

Charleston has a proper shopping street in King Street, which runs from antiques and galleries at its lower end, through national fashion brands, to independent boutiques and design shops. The City Market is the place to buy a sweetgrass basket straight from a Gullah weaver.

Daytona has an outlet centre, a mall, beach shops selling swimwear and biker gear on Main Street, all useful rather than enjoyable. Neither has a luxury tier.

Daytona Beach is the cheaper of the two. Older oceanfront motels and condo rentals mean plenty of rooms, and casual seafood places and diners keep meals reasonable, as long as you avoid the Daytona 500, Bike Week and other event weeks.

Charleston charges big-city rates for rooms on the peninsula and at its well-known restaurants, and paid house and plantation tours add to the bill. Its free pleasures, such as walking the old streets and the Battery, help, and staying in Mount Pleasant costs less but means driving in every day.

Charleston has more on stage, above all in late spring, when Spoleto Festival USA and Piccolo Spoleto fill the city with opera, dance, theatre and jazz. For the rest of the year there are plays at the Dock Street Theatre, the symphony at the Gaillard Center, and Gullah storytelling and song.

In Daytona there is a calendar of events rather than a scene: a winter series of visiting orchestras, touring Broadway shows at the Peabody Auditorium and free summer concerts at the oceanfront bandshell. For more choice, people drive to Orlando.

Neither town has a bathing tradition, so rest comes mostly from the slow pace. Charleston is the gentler of the two, with shaded walled gardens, quiet church courtyards, porches and evenings at White Point Garden, plus resort spas out on Kiawah Island.

Daytona's calm is that of a beach town, with early walks on the hard sand and afternoons by a condo pool, but it disappears when the engines and crowds arrive for race weeks and Bike Week.