Dallas or Louisville?

Neither city is a beach destination, and neither has a sea within a day's reach. What differs is how you cool off. Dallas has big reservoirs such as Lewisville and Grapevine lakes, with plain sandy park beaches, as well as the water parks in Arlington. Louisville's Ohio is a working barge river with strong currents, so swimming there means a pool or a drive out to the countryside reservoirs.

Dallas has more to eat. Brisket sold by weight, Tex-Mex and the steakhouses form the core. The suburbs add real depth, with Vietnamese and Chinese strips in Richardson and Garland, a Koreatown in Carrollton and South Asian cooking in Irving.

Louisville's range is narrower, but bourbon gives it a stronger identity. The Whiskey Row bars and downtown distillery tasting rooms make drinking the main event, and the hot brown and Derby pie are dishes you will not meet in Texas. Beyond the Southern kitchens of NuLu and the Highlands, the choice thins out quickly.

Each city fills two or three days of sightseeing, but the sights are different in kind. Dallas has one site of world history, the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. It also has a compact Arts District with the Dallas Museum of Art and the Nasher Sculpture Center, and the Art Deco halls of Fair Park.

Louisville's sights are about sport and its own famous people: Churchill Downs and the Derby Museum, the Muhammad Ali Center and the Slugger museum on Whiskey Row. It also has more old streets to wander, from the Victorian mansions of Old Louisville to the cast-iron fronts of Main Street. Central Dallas, by contrast, is mostly towers and freeways.

Dallas offers the bigger night out, spread across districts with distinct crowds: scruffy Deep Ellum, the polished patios of Uptown and McKinney Avenue, and the rooftops of Lower Greenville. Bars close at 2am, and you take a ride-hail from one district to the next.

Louisville is a bar town with only a small club scene. The night centres on the Bardstown Road dives and the bourbon bars of NuLu and Butchertown. Some bars are licensed to stay open past the Texas cut-off, and Derby week in spring brings the city's wildest nights.

Louisville is the better place to get outside. Cherokee and Iroquois, two of its Olmsted parks, have wooded hills within the city. The Big Four Bridge walkway crosses the Ohio, and the fossil beds at the Falls of the Ohio are a genuine curiosity. Bernheim Forest and Mammoth Cave are an easy drive away.

Dallas has good city trails in the Katy Trail and the White Rock Lake loop, along with the Great Trinity Forest. But the prairie around it is flat, the nearest real hiking is at Cedar Ridge Preserve, and summer heat pushes most outdoor plans into the early morning.

Louisville has the richer choice of outings. Bourbon country around Bardstown, Frankfort and Lawrenceburg can fill several days, though tastings mean booking a tour or having a designated driver. Lexington's horse farms and Keeneland, Shaker Village and Lincoln's birthplace add more.

Dallas has one excellent day out: Fort Worth, which you can reach by commuter train, with its Stockyards and the Kimbell Art Museum. After that, Grapevine's tasting rooms, the courthouse squares of McKinney and Denton, and Waco are pleasant but less of a draw.

Dallas gives children more to do. There is Six Flags and its water park in Arlington, two large zoos if you count Fort Worth's, the Perot Museum and the rainforest walk at the Dallas World Aquarium. In autumn the State Fair takes over Fair Park.

Louisville is smaller and more relaxed, with a well-regarded zoo, Kentucky Kingdom, the hands-on Kentucky Science Center and underground tram tours in the Mega Cavern. Both cities need a car with children, and Dallas's summer heat is the harder of the two.

Both are car cities, and a hire car or ride-hailing is the realistic plan in either. Dallas at least has DART light rail from both airports to downtown, Deep Ellum and Fair Park, along with the TRE train to Fort Worth and the free M-Line streetcar through Uptown.

Louisville has no rail at all, and its buses are of little use to a visitor. But its distances are short and the traffic is mild, so driving there is far easier than on Dallas's long freeways.

Dallas is a real shopping destination. Neiman Marcus started here, NorthPark Center and the Spanish-style Highland Park Village gather the luxury labels, and Western boots, hats and buckles are a local speciality, sold everywhere from everyday boot shops to custom makers.

Louisville's shopping is modest and local: vintage clothes, records and antiques along Bardstown Road, and a few design shops in NuLu. The best thing to take home is a bottle of bourbon that is hard to find elsewhere, or a Derby hat.

Neither city is cheap, but Dallas stretches a budget a little further, with plenty of good, inexpensive barbecue and tacos, many free or low-cost museums and cheaper hotels out by the freeways. Louisville's moderately priced downtown rooms are its strength. Its museums and distillery tours charge admission, though, and in Derby week room rates rise to several times the usual level.

In both cities, tax and tip on every meal and the cost of a car or ride-hails add up over the days.

Dallas has the grander stages. The Arts District puts the Pei-designed Meyerson Symphony Center, the Winspear Opera House and the Wyly Theatre side by side. Deep Ellum has been a music district since the 1920s and still has bands on most nights.

Louisville has a full set of companies for a city its size, based at the Kentucky Center, and Actors Theatre has long been known for staging new American plays. Its own musical flavour is bluegrass and Americana, heard in the Bardstown Road bars and at summer concerts in the Iroquois Amphitheater.

Neither city is built for rest, but Dallas has a little more in town: polished hotel spas, plenty of day spas and a large Korean-style bathhouse with heated rooms and pools. Louisville has hotel spas and a slower pace, and for a proper spa break you drive about an hour and a half to the old mineral-spring resorts of French Lick and West Baden Springs.