Cocoa Beach or Panama City Beach?

Both towns are built around one long strand, but Panama City Beach's is the more striking. The sand is fine, powder-white quartz and the shallow Gulf water turns clear green on calm days. St. Andrews State Park has a jetty-sheltered lagoon for easy swimming, and boats run out to the empty sands of Shell Island.

Cocoa Beach's pale, firm sand is wide and never more than a few streets away. The Atlantic there is greener, though, and its steady small surf is better for boards than for floating. Its wilder stretches lie towards Cape Canaveral and Satellite Beach. Rip currents are a real hazard on both coasts.

Neither town is worth travelling to for the food, and both serve much the same casual seafood. The difference is in the catch. Cocoa leans on Port Canaveral rock shrimp, fish tacos and raw bars by the Banana River. Panama City Beach has Gulf grouper, fried or blackened, and oysters from nearby bays, and a few kitchens near its lagoon and on its quieter western end cook more carefully.

Cocoa Beach's one real cultural draw is the sight of rockets climbing away from Cape Canaveral, visible from the sand and from the causeways a few miles north. Beyond that, the town offers little more than its long wooden pier.

Panama City Beach has the small Man in the Sea Museum, on diving history and the navy's underwater research, and the older streets and waterfront of the St. Andrews district across the bay. For proper museums or history, you have to drive further from either town.

Both offer beach bars, sports bars and cover bands rather than clubs, and both go quiet early on most nights. Panama City Beach has slightly more going on, with tiki huts over the sand, dockside places on the lagoon and some dancing on summer weekends, though spring break in March makes Front Beach Road rowdy. Cocoa's evenings are smaller and centre on the pier and a few downtown blocks, so for a real late night you have to drive to Orlando.

Cocoa Beach has the richer outdoors. Behind it lies the Indian River Lagoon, where you paddle among mangroves, manatees and dolphins, and on summer nights through glowing plankton. North of the Cape, the Merritt Island refuge and Canaveral National Seashore add alligators, winter birdlife and nesting turtles, and the gentle beach breaks make Cocoa a good place to learn to surf.

At Panama City Beach the outdoors happens mostly on the water: dolphin trips, kayaking on St. Andrew Bay, fishing, and diving on offshore wrecks and artificial reefs. The tall dunes of St. Andrews State Park and the coastal dune lake at Camp Helen are lovely, but the range is narrower.

Cocoa Beach's outings carry more weight. The Kennedy Space Center, half an hour north, easily fills a day. Orlando's theme parks and Winter Park's museums are about an hour inland, and Cocoa Village makes an easy half day.

From Panama City Beach, the best drive goes west along Scenic Highway 30A to the planned pastel towns of Seaside and Rosemary Beach. To the east is Apalachicola, an old oyster port. These are pleasant trips, but nothing within reach compares with the space centre.

Both suit families equally well, with condos and pools, lifeguarded sand and summer heat to plan around. What differs is how children are kept busy. Panama City Beach has a water park, a marine park, mini-golf and go-karts on the strip, plus a calm lagoon where small children can snorkel. Cocoa has little for children in town, but rocket launches, the space centre and Orlando's theme parks are all within reach.

Cocoa Beach is a short, narrow strip, so the sand is a few minutes' walk from most rooms and a bicycle covers downtown and the pier. You still need a car for the space centre, the wildlife refuge and the airport in Orlando, about an hour away.

Panama City Beach stretches for about 43km along one main road and a parallel highway, and nearly everything there needs a car. Pavements come and go, the trolley-buses are slow and sparse, and summer traffic on Front Beach Road can crawl.

Panama City Beach has more to browse. There is a large open-air shopping centre by the city pier with mainstream chains and a department store, and giant souvenir warehouses with shark-mouth entrances line the strip. For something more individual, there are boutiques in the 30A towns to the west.

Cocoa Beach's shopping is almost entirely surf gear. It centres on a vast round-the-clock surf store that has been a landmark since the 1960s, plus smaller shops selling locally shaped boards. For anything more, you cross to Cocoa Village or drive to Orlando.

Costs are much the same in both, with full American resort prices for meals, drinks and car hire. Panama City Beach's rates fall sharply outside summer and spring break, so long winter stays are especially cheap there. Cocoa's motels and older condos stay reasonable outside the busiest weeks but climb on launch weekends, and tickets for the space centre and the inland parks add up over a week.

In both towns, live performance mostly means cover bands on beach-bar decks. Panama City Beach adds summer concerts at its shopping centre and has a restored historic theatre across the bay. Cocoa has a community playhouse in Cocoa Village and a regional arts centre in Melbourne, and Orlando is close enough for bigger shows.

Cocoa Beach keeps its unhurried pace for most of the year, with quiet weekdays outside the busiest vacation weeks, early walks on the sand and sunsets over the Banana River. Panama City Beach is calm only in its off season. From autumn to spring the beach empties and the pace slows, but summer and spring break bring noise and crowds.

Spa facilities are modest in both towns: a few day spas, some massage and occasional yoga on the beach. From Cocoa, the nearest proper spa resorts are the larger hotels around Orlando.