Daytona Beach or Nashville?

Daytona Beach is built around its sand: some 37km of wide, firm beach where cars are even allowed on marked stretches, with the Atlantic warm enough for long swims from late spring into autumn. Expect waves, greenish water and rip currents, so stay near the lifeguards. For quieter sand, head north to Ormond Beach or south towards Ponce Inlet and the surf at New Smyrna Beach.

Nashville is a long way from any sea. The nearest swimming is at the reservoir lakes, Percy Priest and Old Hickory, where locals spend summer weekends on pontoon boats. That makes a pleasant hot afternoon, not a reason to book.

Neither is a gourmet destination, but Nashville has a food culture of its own and Daytona Beach mostly does not. Daytona's best meals are seafood eaten on a deck over the Halifax River or near Ponce Inlet, such as fried shrimp, grouper sandwiches and smoked fish dip. Chain restaurants fill the main roads in between.

Nashville has hot chicken, meat-and-three cafeterias, barbecue and Tennessee whiskey. It also has chef-led kitchens in East Nashville, Germantown and the Gulch, and the Kurdish, Mexican and Vietnamese places along Nolensville Pike. Planning your meals pays off there, while in Daytona you simply eat well enough between beach days.

Daytona Beach's sights are mostly about speed. You can tour Daytona International Speedway and learn about the land-speed records set on the beach itself. Beyond that there is the Museum of Arts and Sciences with its Cuban art, and the climb up Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse. A day or two covers it.

Nashville has more to fill a stay, and almost all of it is 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 in Centennial Park and the Frist Art Museum in its Art Deco post office add art, and the Hermitage and Belle Meade cover the region's harder history.

Daytona Beach's nights are mostly tiki bars, sports bars and sunset drinks. The biker saloons on Main Street only fill up during Bike Week, Biketoberfest and race weeks, and outside those dates evenings are quiet.

Nashville goes out far harder. The honky-tonks on Lower Broadway are several storeys tall with a band on every floor, and they stay busy into the small hours. East Nashville's dive bars and cocktail lounges and Midtown's student crowd offer other kinds of night. It is drinking with live music rather than clubbing, but there is a lot more of it.

Daytona Beach has the better outdoors for a visitor, and most of it is on the water. You can kayak among dolphins on Mosquito Lagoon in Canaveral National Seashore, go birding at Merritt Island, see manatees at Blue Spring in winter, canoe in Tomoka State Park and surf near Ponce Inlet. It is all flat, and in summer the heat means getting out early.

Nashville offers gentler wooded country: easy trails at Radnor Lake, longer forest walks in the Warner Parks, a canoe trip on the Harpeth and cycling along the Natchez Trace Parkway. It is lovely in spring and autumn, but it suits a walk more than a wildlife trip.

Within an hour or so of Daytona Beach are three of Florida's biggest draws. St Augustine's Spanish fort and old streets lie to the north, Kennedy Space Center to the south and Orlando's theme parks inland. Winter Park, DeLand and New Smyrna Beach make gentler days out, and all of them are easy by car.

Nashville's outings are smaller and slower. Franklin's preserved Main Street and Civil War houses are half an hour south, and the village of Leiper's Fork, the Stones River battlefield and the whiskey distilleries around Lynchburg are also within reach. Chattanooga is a long day's drive. These make pleasant, unhurried days, but none matches a rocket launch site or a day at the theme parks.

Both work for families, but in different ways. Daytona Beach is a beach stay: wide, flat sand, arcades and small rides along the boardwalk, condo rentals with pools, and Orlando's parks an hour away. Rip currents and the noisy event weeks are the things to watch.

Nashville is a trip planned around its attractions: the zoo at Grassmere, the Adventure Science Center, the Lane Motor Museum and the Parthenon. Expect a lot of driving between them, and Lower Broadway is best left to the adults.

Daytona Beach is spread along long roads on both sides of the river, and the buses are too infrequent to rely on. Only the boardwalk area and the beach itself suit walking or cycling, so plan on renting a car, and expect traffic jams during big events.

Nashville also relies on cars, but part of a stay works without one. Its compact downtown puts Broadway, the Ryman, the Hall of Fame, the riverfront and the Gulch within a short walk of each other, and the pedestrian bridge crosses to the east bank. Ride-hailing covers the outlying neighbourhoods and sights.

Shopping in Daytona Beach is purely practical, while Nashville gives you something specific to hunt for. In Daytona the outlet centre and regional mall cover brand-name clothes and the beach shops sell swimwear and souvenirs. Main Street's biker gear is the only real speciality.

Nashville's theme is Western wear and music. Lower Broadway sells boots, hats and rhinestone shirts, the city has guitars old and new to browse, and Hatch Show Print sells its letterpress concert posters. For a quieter afternoon, 12 South and East Nashville have independent boutiques and record shops.

Daytona Beach is the cheaper of the two. Older oceanfront motels and condo rentals give plenty of choice, and casual seafood keeps meals modest. The real costs are the hire car and the jump in room rates during the Daytona 500 and Bike Week.

Nashville's downtown hotels are expensive, especially at weekends, and meals and ride-hailing cost what they do in any big American city. The saving grace is that the music in the honky-tonks is free, and staying midweek or outside downtown makes a real difference.

On live performance the two cities are worlds apart. The best of Daytona Beach's programme comes in winter, when visiting orchestras and touring Broadway shows play the Peabody Auditorium. The town has no orchestra or opera company of its own, so anyone wanting more drives to Orlando.

In Nashville, live music is the trip itself. The Grand Ole Opry runs several nights a week and the Ryman hosts touring acts of every genre. At songwriter nights in small rooms, the people who wrote the hits play them on acoustic guitar. Classical audiences are well served too, with the Nashville Symphony at the Schermerhorn and ballet and opera at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.

Neither city has a spa tradition, but Daytona Beach is the easier place to slow down. You can take early walks on the hard sand, spend afternoons by a condo pool and watch the sunset over the river, as long as you avoid race weeks and Bike Week. Nashville's downtown runs on noise and late nights, so a quieter stay means basing yourself in leafy Belmont or Hillsboro and booking a hotel spa or day spa for treatments.