Chicago or Nashville?

Chicago has real sand beaches on Lake Michigan inside the city, from Oak Street Beach under the Gold Coast towers to the volleyball crowd at North Avenue. The swimming season runs only from late June to early September, but in those weeks a beach afternoon fits easily between sights.

Nashville has nothing comparable. Its reservoirs, Percy Priest and Old Hickory, have small swimming areas and warm water, but local summer life there happens on pontoon boats rather than on sand. Anyone who wants to swim on a city trip should pick Chicago.

Both cities have dishes of their own: Chicago its deep-dish and tavern-cut pizza, Italian beef and dressed hot dogs, and Nashville its cayenne-soaked hot chicken and meat-and-three cafeterias. The difference is depth.

Chicago adds a top tier of tasting-menu kitchens along Randolph Street and whole neighbourhoods of serious Mexican, South Asian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Polish and Korean cooking. Nashville's modern kitchens in East Nashville and the Gulch and the immigrant stretch of Nolensville Pike are worth seeking out, but most meals there stay within the Southern tradition of barbecue, biscuits and whiskey.

Chicago offers far more to see. It is where the skyscraper came of age, so a walk through the Loop or a river cruise works as an architecture course, with Frank Lloyd Wright's houses in Hyde Park and Oak Park beyond. The Art Institute and the Field Museum are institutions of international weight.

Nashville's sightseeing is mostly about music: the Country Music Hall of Fame, the National Museum of African American Music and a daytime tour of the Ryman. The Parthenon replica, the Frist in its Art Deco post office, and the Hermitage and Belle Meade plantations widen it, but a couple of days covers the essentials.

Chicago gives you more ways to spend a night out. Bars pour until 4am, and each district has its own style: cocktail and dive bars in Wicker Park and Logan Square, dance clubs in River North, Northalsted for gay nightlife, and dance floors that still carry the city's house music heritage.

Nashville's night is louder but narrower. Lower Broadway's multi-storey honky-tonks with live bands run as one long street party, packed with hen and stag groups, and East Nashville offers calmer bars. If you want DJs and dancing, go to Chicago. If you want drinking to a live country band, go to Nashville.

Neither city is an outdoors destination, and the landscapes are quite different. Chicago's nature is the lake: a shoreline path of about 29km for walking, cycling and skating, birding in Lincoln and Jackson Parks, and the dunes of Indiana Dunes National Park about an hour away, all on flat ground.

Nashville sits in gentle wooded hill country. Radnor Lake and the Warner Parks have forest trails within the city, the Harpeth River suits an easy paddle, and the Natchez Trace Parkway starts just south of town. Spring and autumn suit it best, whereas Chicago's outdoors belongs to summer.

Nashville has the better choice of short trips. Franklin, half an hour south, combines a handsome Main Street with Civil War battlefields, Leiper's Fork adds galleries and roadhouses, and the Tennessee whiskey distilleries around Lynchburg make an easy themed outing.

From Chicago the reliable choice is Milwaukee by train, plus the Wright houses of Oak Park on the city's edge. Lake Geneva and the Michigan harbour towns need a car, and the prairie around the city offers little else within easy reach.

Chicago is much easier with children. The Museum of Science and Industry can fill a day, the Museum Campus puts dinosaurs, belugas and a planetarium side by side, and Lincoln Park Zoo is free. Navy Pier, Maggie Daley Park and lifeguarded summer beaches round it out.

Nashville has a good zoo at Grassmere, the Adventure Science Center and the Lane Motor Museum, but they are spread out and mean time in the car. Its most famous street is an adult drinking strip, which shapes the evenings.

Chicago works without a car. The L runs from both airports into the Loop, and the main sights from Millennium Park to the Museum Campus are a flat walk apart. Reaching other neighbourhoods may need a bus along the long avenues, and January wind makes every walk harder.

Nashville is easy on foot only in its compact downtown, where Broadway, the Ryman and the Gulch sit close together. Beyond that there is only a bus network, so the Opry, the Hermitage and East Nashville mean ride-hailing or a hire car, with heavy traffic on the interstates.

Chicago is the stronger shopping city. It has the flagships and department stores of the Magnificent Mile, luxury labels on Oak Street and the old Marshall Field's building under its Tiffany ceiling, plus independent fashion and vintage shops in Wicker Park and Andersonville.

Nashville's shopping is themed but distinctive: cowboy boots, hats and rhinestone shirts on Broadway, excellent guitar shops and letterpress posters from Hatch Show Print. Big brands and luxury stores are out in suburban malls such as Green Hills.

Both are expensive by any measure, with costly downtown hotels and taxes and tips added to every bill. The ways to save differ. In Chicago, the free lakefront, beaches, Millennium Park and Lincoln Park Zoo, a cheap L ride and the taquerias and hot dog stands keep a day affordable, and visiting outside summer helps.

In Nashville, the honky-tonks have no cover charge, so the music costs nothing. Weekend group demand pushes hotel rates up and ride-hailing adds up across a spread-out city, so a midweek stay and meals at hot chicken counters make the biggest difference.

Both cities are outstanding for live performance, in different ways. Chicago has range: a world-class symphony on Michigan Avenue, a full opera season, a deep theatre scene from the Goodman and Steppenwolf to storefront companies, nightly improv at Second City, and electric blues and late jazz sets in neighbourhood clubs.

Nashville is built around song. The Grand Ole Opry, touring artists at the Ryman, songwriter nights in small rooms and bluegrass near the Gulch give it a focus no other city has, though it also has a fine symphony hall and touring musicals. For plays and comedy, choose Chicago. For an evening of country music, choose Nashville.

Neither city is a place to unwind, but Chicago has more to offer. Its century-old Russian-and-Turkish bathhouse in Wicker Park, a Korean-style jjimjilbang in the suburbs and the warm glasshouses of the Lincoln Park and Garfield Park conservatories are real alternatives to a hotel spa.

Nashville has hotel and day spas only. The calmest way to stay there is to sleep in leafy Belmont or Hillsboro, well away from the noise of Broadway.