Cocoa Beach or New Orleans?

Cocoa Beach is built around its beach. One long run of pale, firm sand covers the whole barrier island, with lifeguarded stretches by the pier and wilder dunes towards Cape Canaveral. The water is greenish and the surf can bring rip currents, but this is a real ocean beach town.

New Orleans has no beach to speak of. Lake Pontchartrain is for strolling and sailing, nobody swims in the Mississippi, and the shallow, brownish Gulf shore at Bay St. Louis is more than an hour's drive away.

Cocoa Beach eats well enough after a day outdoors: Port Canaveral rock shrimp, fish tacos and raw bars on the Banana River docks. Still, it is beach-grill and chain-restaurant food, not a reason to come.

New Orleans is one of the few American cities people visit just to eat. There is gumbo, étouffée and turtle soup in century-old French Quarter dining rooms, po'boys in Mid-City, crawfish boils in spring and a Sazerac in the city that invented it. The one weakness is range, because nearly everything is rich and rooted in Creole and Cajun tradition.

Apart from the wooden pier, Cocoa Beach has almost nothing to visit in town. Its one great spectacle is watching a rocket climb from Cape Canaveral, seen from the sand.

New Orleans has a near-complete colonial old town in the French Quarter, with Jackson Square, the cathedral and the Cabildo, where Louisiana passed to the United States. Add the Garden District mansions, the above-ground tombs and the National WWII Museum, and there are days of walking and looking here.

A night out in Cocoa Beach means a sports bar or an open-air deck with a covers band near the pier. It gets louder at spring break, but it is usually over well before the small hours, and real clubs are an hour away in Orlando.

New Orleans has no legal closing time, and you can carry your drink down the street. The night runs from neon Bourbon Street to the music bars of Frenchmen Street and the dives of the Bywater. It is bar-hopping on foot rather than clubbing, and around Bourbon Street late at night you need to watch for pickpockets.

Cocoa Beach has the richer outdoors. Behind the beach, the Indian River Lagoon offers kayaking among manatees, dolphins and, on summer nights, glowing plankton. Merritt Island's refuge and Canaveral National Seashore add alligators, winter birds and nesting turtles, and the steady beach breaks suit beginner surfers.

New Orleans gives you the swamp instead: boat tours through bayous and cypress forest, the boardwalks of the Barataria Preserve, and the old oaks and lagoons of City Park in town. Both landscapes are flat, and both are best outside the summer heat.

Both have a short list of day trips, but the themes are very different. From Cocoa Beach the outings are about space and fun. The Kennedy Space Center, with the Saturn V and the shuttle Atlantis, fills a day, Orlando's theme parks are an hour inland, and Spanish colonial St Augustine is a long day out.

From New Orleans the outings are about history and Louisiana's own culture. The River Road leads to the plantations, and the Whitney is the most moving of them. Baton Rouge has its capitols, and Lafayette's Cajun dance halls lie about two hours west.

Cocoa Beach is the easier choice with children. The beach is wide and has lifeguards, surf lessons for beginners are everywhere and condos with pools are easy to find. The space centre and the theme parks are within reach, though you need to watch the currents and the summer lightning.

New Orleans has more for children than its reputation suggests: Audubon Zoo, the riverfront aquarium, the carousel and storybook garden in City Park, and streetcar rides. Still, the heat, Bourbon Street and some streets after dark take more planning.

In Cocoa Beach the sand is close and a bicycle covers the pier and downtown. For everything else along the single main road and beyond, you need a car, and the nearest major airport is about an hour away.

New Orleans works without one. The French Quarter, the Marigny and the Warehouse District are flat and easy to walk, and the green St. Charles streetcars glide out to the Garden District. They are slow, so ride-hailing fills the gaps, and some stretches between neighbourhoods are best not walked at night.

Shopping in Cocoa Beach is surf culture: boards from local shapers, beachwear and the vast round-the-clock surf store that has stood on the main road for decades. For anything more, you drive to Cocoa Village or the Orlando malls.

New Orleans gives you far more to browse. Royal Street has antique dealers and galleries, Magazine Street runs for miles of independent and vintage shops, and the French Market sells hot sauces and pralines. Designer labels are scarce in both places.

Overall costs are much the same, but the money goes on different things. In Cocoa Beach, motels and casual seafood grills are reasonable, while the hire car, the space centre ticket and inland park admissions add up over a week.

In New Orleans you can skip the car, the streetcar is cheap and street music and walking the Quarter cost nothing. Rooms near the Quarter are the big expense, and they climb sharply around Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest.

In Cocoa Beach, live performance mostly means cover bands on beach-bar decks, with the regional arts centre in Melbourne and the Cocoa Village playhouse a short drive away.

New Orleans is where jazz was born, and music is a reason in itself to go. Every night there are brass bands, blues, zydeco and traditional jazz on Frenchmen Street and in the old Quarter jazz hall. On Sundays second-line parades move through the neighbourhoods, and Jazz Fest comes in spring. Opera and orchestral seasons are modest, so the clubs and the streets are the real draw.

Neither has a spa tradition. Both offer a few day spas and studios, and the big spa resorts are elsewhere. The difference is in the kind of calm. In Cocoa Beach it means early walks on the sand, beach yoga and sunsets over the Banana River on a quiet weekday.

In New Orleans, rest means a shaded courtyard guesthouse, a slow streetcar ride under the oaks of St. Charles Avenue and an idle afternoon in City Park. Just stay away from the French Quarter once night falls.