Cocoa Beach or Wilmington?

Cocoa Beach is the stronger beach base because the whole town sits on the sand. One long, firm strand runs the length of the island, so you can walk to the beach every morning. The sea also stays swimmable for much more of the year.

Wilmington's beaches are lovely but separate from the city. Wrightsville has the cleanest water and the most polished feel, Carolina Beach is livelier, and Kure is quieter. Each one means a drive and a summer parking hunt. The variety is a real plus, and Wrightsville's water is clearer than the greenish surf off Cocoa Beach.

Wilmington has more of a food culture to explore. Local shrimp, flounder and oysters, eastern North Carolina's vinegar-sauced whole-hog barbecue, modern Southern restaurants in old brick buildings and a cluster of craft breweries give a few days of interesting meals.

Cocoa Beach keeps things simple: rock shrimp from Port Canaveral, fish tacos, dockside grills on the Banana River and big breakfasts before a surf, with chains along the main road. It is fine after a beach day, but nobody comes here for the food.

There is a wide gap here. Wilmington's riverside historic district has live oaks, Victorian houses, the Bellamy Mansion and the old Cotton Exchange. Across the river, the Battleship North Carolina gives the city a sight of national interest, and two or three days of sightseeing are easy to fill.

Cocoa Beach has the pier and its one remarkable spectacle: rockets climbing from Cape Canaveral, visible from the beach. Beyond that, anyone looking for museums or history has to leave town.

Cocoa Beach's evenings are short and simple: beach bars, sports bars and open-air decks around the pier where a band plays covers, with a few blocks of the downtown strip for another drink. Spring break and long weekends raise the volume, but on an ordinary night the town winds down long before the small hours, and anyone who wants clubs faces the hour's drive to Orlando.

Wilmington gives you more of a night out. At weekends downtown around Front Street fills with pubs and rooftop terraces, university students keep the crowd lively, and the evenings run noticeably later than on the Space Coast. It is still casual rather than a club city, and quiet on weeknights out of season, while in summer Wrightsville and Carolina Beach add their own relaxed beach bars.

Both are flat, watery places with no hills to hike, but the wildlife is different. Around Cocoa Beach you can kayak the Indian River Lagoon with manatees and dolphins, paddle through bioluminescent water on summer nights, and drive past alligators in the Merritt Island refuge. Sea turtles nest on the beaches, and gentle breaks make it a good place to learn to surf.

Wilmington's highlights are Masonboro Island, an undeveloped island reached only by boat or kayak, and the pine savanna of Carolina Beach State Park, where the Venus flytrap grows wild. Fishing and sailing matter more here, and summer brings biting insects in the marshes.

Cocoa Beach has the outing you won't find anywhere else. The Kennedy Space Center, with the Saturn V and the shuttle Atlantis, fills a day about half an hour away, and Orlando's parks or the quieter streets of Winter Park are an hour inland. Spanish colonial St Augustine is a long day at around two hours each way.

Wilmington's trips are gentler small-town days: Southport and the ferry to car-free Bald Head Island, the Civil War earthworks at Fort Fisher, and colonial New Bern and Beaufort further north. They are pleasant, but none has the pull of the space centre.

Cocoa Beach is simpler with children because the beach is right there. Condos have kitchens and pools, lifeguards cover the town parks, and both the space centre and the theme parks are within reach.

Wilmington has more for rainy days: the aquarium at Fort Fisher, the decks of the battleship, a children's museum, and the old-fashioned rides on the Carolina Beach boardwalk. The catch is that every one of these, the sea included, starts with loading the car.

Both towns really need a car, but you walk in different places. In Cocoa Beach the walk is from your room to the sand, and a bicycle covers the pier and the short downtown. Almost everything else, including the nearest major airport in Orlando, is a drive.

Wilmington has a flat, compact historic centre linked by the riverwalk, so the town itself is pleasant on foot. The beaches, though, are 15km or more away on suburban roads that slow down on summer weekends.

Wilmington has more browsing. Front Street and the restored Cotton Exchange have independent boutiques, galleries, bookshops and antique dealers, enough for an unhurried afternoon.

Cocoa Beach is all about surf. Ron Jon Surf Shop, the round-the-clock landmark on the main road, and smaller shops selling boards from local shapers are the reasons to stop. For anything else, people drive to Cocoa Village or Orlando's malls.

Costs are much the same in both, with full American restaurant prices plus tax and tipping, and a hire car neither town lets you skip. What pushes up the bill is different. In Cocoa Beach it is spring, launch weekends and the tickets for the space centre and theme parks. In Wilmington it is summer beach rentals, while city hotels are reasonable out of season.

Wilmington has a real performing arts life for a city its size. Thalian Hall, a 19th-century opera house, hosts theatre and touring shows, there is a community symphony, and summer brings concerts by Greenfield Lake and long-running jazz and blues festivals.

Cocoa Beach mostly offers cover bands on beach-bar decks. A regional arts centre in Melbourne and the playhouse in Cocoa Village are a drive away, and serious theatregoers end up in Orlando.

Neither is a spa destination, so relaxing here mostly comes down to the pace. Cocoa Beach offers beach yoga, walks on the sand at sunrise and sunsets over the Banana River, but for a proper spa resort you have to go to Orlando. Wilmington has resort spas near the beaches and quiet evenings on the riverfront, which make an easier place to unwind outside the busy summer weekends.