Charleston or Miami Beach?

In Charleston the beach is an outing. Folly, Sullivan's Island and Isle of Palms are each a drive of about half an hour from the old town. The tidal water is greenish, and swimming season runs from late spring into October.

In Miami Beach the beach is the point of the whole stay. About 11km of pale sand lines the island, the sea is calmer and warm enough to swim in all year, and you can walk to it from almost any hotel. You trade Charleston's quiet dune-backed islands for crowds, vendors and music on the busy stretches.

Charleston has a cuisine of its own and cooks it with real pride. It is Lowcountry food with Gullah Geechee roots: shrimp and grits, she-crab soup, oyster roasts and whole-hog barbecue, eaten in restored townhouses or at seafood shacks on Shem Creek. The catch is that there's little variety beyond it.

Miami Beach eats more upscale and with a Latin American accent. Cuban sandwiches and cafecito from takeaway windows and stone crabs in winter are the local highlights. Ocean Drive's tourist menus drag the average down, though, and the best Cuban cooking is across the causeway in Little Havana.

History is what Charleston does best. The streets south of Broad have Georgian and antebellum houses, and some of them open their grand rooms alongside the enslaved people's quarters. Fort Sumter sits out in the harbour, and two museums deal openly with the city's part in the slave trade.

Miami Beach's great sight is from a single period, the 1930s Art Deco district, and you can see it in a long walk. After that come the Wolfsonian, the Bass and the Holocaust Memorial. The major museums and older neighbourhoods are on the mainland.

This is where the two differ most. South Beach is a famous place to go out, with DJ-led clubs open until dawn, hotel pool parties in the afternoon and dinners that start late. The glamour comes with dress codes and door policies.

Charleston's nights are bars, not clubs. You'll find rooftops and cocktail rooms on upper King Street, old taverns in the French Quarter and a few beach bars on Folly, and most places close at about 2am. It makes for an easy evening, not the reason for the trip.

Both are flat coastal places where the outdoors happens on the water, but the water is different. Charleston has the marsh: kayaks through spartina creeks with dolphins alongside, live oaks hung with moss, and alligators in the ACE Basin. Miami Beach looks out to sea, with snorkelling and diving on offshore reefs and wrecks, mangrove trails at Oleta River and the Everglades about an hour away.

Charleston has more history within reach. The Ashley River plantations are about half an hour away, Savannah's squares make a full day out, and Beaufort is the place to learn about Gullah culture on the sea islands.

From Miami Beach the trips are mostly modern Florida. You can cross to Little Havana, Wynwood, Vizcaya and Coral Gables, drive up to Palm Beach's mansions or go south as far as Key Largo. There is little older heritage. From either city, nearly every trip needs a car.

The two come out level for children, but in different ways. Charleston has more to do in town: the aquarium and children's museum on the waterfront, the aircraft carrier at Patriots Point and the boat to Fort Sumter. Its beaches, though, mean a drive.

Miami Beach gives families warm, gentle water with lifeguards along the whole shore, plus resort pools in Mid-Beach and North Beach. Almost everything else built for children is on the mainland, and South Beach's party crowds are best avoided with little ones.

Miami Beach is easier to manage without a car. South Beach is compact, and free trolleys and buses run up Collins Avenue. Bike share and the beachwalk link the hotels to the sand. Only leaving the island gets slow, with no rail link and causeways that clog up.

Charleston's peninsula is just as pleasant on foot. But the beaches and plantations most visitors want are off it and buses rarely reach them, so you end up driving or calling rides every day.

Both offer about the same amount of shopping, but in different kinds. Charleston's is one long street: King Street runs from antiques dealers to chain stores to independent boutiques. City Market's sweetgrass baskets are the craft to bring home. Miami Beach has Lincoln Road's chain stores for strolling and Bal Harbour's European luxury houses for serious spending. That top tier is missing in Charleston, but Miami Beach has no local crafts or markets.

Both are expensive, and Charleston is a little less so. Its peninsula inns charge big-city rates and the paid house tours add up, but walking the old streets, the Battery and the beaches costs nothing.

Miami Beach piles extras onto the bill. Resort fees, parking and service charges add up in winter, and South Beach cocktails and club entry are steep. Side-street hotels, North Beach and the stormy summer season are how to spend less.

Miami Beach has more going on through the year. The New World Symphony plays in its Frank Gehry hall and projects some concerts onto the outside wall for people on the lawn. Miami City Ballet is based on the island, and the main season runs from autumn to spring.

Charleston's big moment is Spoleto Festival USA, more than two weeks of opera, dance and jazz each late spring. Outside the festival there's the Dock Street Theatre, the symphony and Gullah storytelling to look out for.

Neither has a bathing tradition, but Miami Beach does more with spas. Its large resorts have hydrotherapy circuits with saunas and plunge pools, there's sunrise yoga on the sand, and Mid-Beach is made for slow pool days.

Charleston relaxes you more through its pace than through treatments. It has shaded walled gardens, quiet church courtyards and evenings at White Point Garden, and the resort spas are out on Kiawah Island.