Charleston or Marco Island?

On Marco Island the beach is the vacation itself. In Charleston it is a half-day trip out from the old town. Charleston's three barrier islands each have their own character: surfy Folly with its pier, residential Sullivan's with old forts behind the dunes, and resort-like Isle of Palms. The Atlantic there is tidal and greenish, rip currents turn up some days, and you need a car to reach any of them.

Marco's western shore is one long sweep of fine pale sand, often right outside the hotel, with shallow water and no real surf. Wading on the Tigertail sandbar and shelling at low tide are easy, and the warmer Gulf keeps the sea swimmable for more of the year.

Charleston eats like a much bigger city. Its Lowcountry cooking draws on Gullah Geechee and West African roots, from shrimp and grits to Carolina Gold rice and winter oyster roasts, and is served everywhere from townhouse dining rooms to whole-hog barbecue joints. Biscuit breakfasts and craft breweries round it out.

Marco Island does one thing well, Gulf seafood by the water: grouper sandwiches, stone crab claws in the cooler months, and fish platters eaten outdoors on Goodland's docks. Beyond that the choice is narrow, and for an ambitious dinner people drive to Naples.

This is where the two differ most. In Charleston the historic peninsula is the sight itself, with piazza-fronted single houses, Rainbow Row, the Battery and house museums like the Aiken-Rhett that show both the grandeur and the slavery behind it. Add Fort Sumter in the harbour and the Old Slave Mart Museum and you have two or three full days.

Marco Island was built mostly from the 1960s on. Its one real cultural stop is the historical museum, which covers the Calusa people and the carved wooden figures found in the 1890s, and a morning is enough for it.

Neither is a club destination, but Charleston at least gives you a night out: rooftop bars, cocktail rooms and oyster bars along upper King Street, busy with students and weekend groups, plus quieter taverns in the French Quarter. Marco's evenings end with sunset drinks on a waterfront deck and dinner. Goodland's dockside bars are mostly a winter weekend afternoon affair, and the crowd is older and mellow.

Both are flat tidal coastlines where kayakers meet bottlenose dolphins, but Marco Island has the wilder setting. It sits on the edge of the Ten Thousand Islands, with mangrove channels, manatees in the canals and some of Florida's best inshore fishing for tarpon and snook. Everglades National Park, Big Cypress and the Fakahatchee Strand are all within an hour, with airboats, alligators and cypress boardwalks.

Charleston's Lowcountry is gentler: spartina marsh, live oaks hung with Spanish moss, and quiet trails in the Francis Marion forest and the ACE Basin. The seasons differ too. Charleston is best outdoors in spring and autumn, Marco in the dry winter months.

Charleston has the stronger list. The Ashley River plantations, including Middleton Place, Magnolia and Drayton Hall, are half an hour away, McLeod Plantation tells the history of the enslaved people in full, and Savannah's squares and the Gullah sea islands around Beaufort each make a rewarding day.

From Marco Island the outings are pleasant rather than memorable: Naples' pier and gallery streets, the Edison and Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers, the shell beaches of Sanibel, and the old trading post at Chokoloskee. Its best days out lead into the swamps rather than to towns. Both places assume you have a car.

Both work well with children, in different ways. Charleston offers more variety: the aquarium and children's museum on the waterfront, an aircraft carrier to climb through at Patriots Point, the boat to Fort Sumter and beach days on the islands.

Marco Island keeps things simple, with soft sand, a calm, shallow sea that suits toddlers, resort pools with children's programmes and dolphin-spotting boat trips, plus the Naples zoo for a change. Neither has a theme park, and summer afternoons are hard going in both.

Charleston's historic peninsula is compact and flat enough to cover on foot, with a free shuttle and pedicabs to fill the gaps, so you only need a car for beaches and plantations. Marco Island has cycle paths linking the beach, shops and restaurants, which are pleasant in the cooler months, but almost everything else, including the airport three quarters of an hour away, means driving.

King Street gives Charleston a proper shopping street, with antiques at the lower end and independent boutiques at the top, and the sweetgrass baskets woven by Gullah artisans at the City Market are a craft worth taking home. Marco Island has a few plazas of resort wear and shell souvenirs. Its serious shopping is half an hour away, on Fifth Avenue South in Naples.

Neither is cheap, but Marco Island is the harder of the two on a budget. From January to April beachfront rooms are in high demand, eating out is expensive across the board, and a hire car is unavoidable.

Charleston's peninsula inns and well-known restaurants also charge big-city prices, but walking the old streets and the Battery costs nothing, and on town days you can do without a car. The ways to save differ too: in Charleston, stay across the bridge in Mount Pleasant; on Marco, come in summer or take a weekly condo with a kitchen.

Charleston has Spoleto Festival USA, more than two weeks of opera, chamber music, dance and jazz each late spring. For the rest of the year there are the Dock Street Theatre, the symphony at the Gaillard Center and the distinctive Gullah storytelling and song. On Marco Island it comes down to a community theatre and resort-bar musicians in winter. The philharmonic means a drive to Naples, and outside the season there is little on.

For a week of doing very little, Marco Island has the edge. Charleston's calm comes from its old town: shaded gardens, quiet church courtyards, porches and long evenings by the water at White Point Garden. Spa time means a hotel spa in town or a drive out to the resorts on Kiawah Island, and the streets and sights are always there to pull you back into sightseeing.

Marco Island is built around the slow day itself. The beachfront resorts have full-service spas and pools looking out over the Gulf, and the island's plazas have yoga classes and day spas, so rest takes no planning. If you want thermal baths or a public bathhouse, you won't find them in either place.