Destin or New Orleans?

This is Destin's strongest suit. You'll find white quartz sand and clear green water at Henderson Beach State Park, Okaloosa Island and Miramar Beach, with the 30A dune lakes close by and calm, shallow water at Crab Island in the bay. From late spring to autumn the sea is warm, but watch the flags for rip currents on rough days.

New Orleans faces a lake and a working river, and you can't swim in either. The nearest beaches are around Bay St. Louis, well over an hour away, where the water is warm but brownish. Most visitors to New Orleans do their swimming in the hotel pool.

Destin eats well within narrow limits. Red snapper, grouper and royal red shrimp come straight off the charter boats, but away from the harbour decks the coast highway is mostly chains, and the better kitchens are out along 30A.

New Orleans has one of the most distinctive cuisines in the country. The old Creole dining rooms of the French Quarter, the po'boy shops of Mid-City, the beignets by Jackson Square and the seasonal crawfish and oysters are reason enough to go. Its cocktail culture, which gave the world the Sazerac, adds to the case.

The gap here is wide. Destin grew out of a fishing village and kept very little. A small fishing museum, the temple mound in Fort Walton Beach and an outdoor display of military aircraft fill a morning at most.

New Orleans has the French Quarter, an unusually intact colonial town with Jackson Square, St. Louis Cathedral and the Cabildo at its heart. Add the Garden District mansions, the old cemeteries and the National WWII Museum. The museum list is short, but the streets themselves are the sight.

Destin's evenings follow the seasons and are mostly in the open air. People drink on the decks along the harbour boardwalk and at beach bars on Okaloosa Island, and the afternoon raft-ups at Crab Island are as much of a party as anything after dark. Outside summer, most nights end early.

New Orleans has no closing time and lets you carry a drink along the street. There's the neon crush of Bourbon Street, the music bars of Frenchmen Street and the corner dives of the Bywater. Neither city has much of a club scene, but in New Orleans the bar-hopping goes on all year.

Destin has the better outdoors, and almost all of it is on the water. Deep-sea charters reach big game fish quickly, the bay is good for paddleboarding and sailing, dolphins swim in the pass, and the state parks to the east have high white dunes and rare coastal dune lakes.

The landscape around New Orleans is wetter and wilder. Swamp tours and kayaks in the Barataria Preserve pass alligators and cypress draped in Spanish moss, and City Park and the river levee are good for an easy ride. Both are flat, and both are too humid for much exertion in midsummer.

New Orleans has slightly more to offer. The River Road plantations, with the Whitney the most affecting of them, are about an hour upstream. Baton Rouge's capitol tower and the quiet Gulf towns of Bay St. Louis and Ocean Springs are further options, and Cajun country is within a long day's reach.

From Destin, the best outings are the planned pastel towns of Seaside and Rosemary Beach on 30A, and Pensacola's colonial district, naval aviation museum and brick forts. After those, the options become more of the same beach coast.

Destin is the easier family trip. The water is gentle on calm days and the sand is soft, condos with pools are easy to find, and there's a marine park, a water park, go-karts and pirate-ship cruises. The costs are summer traffic and the heat, and parents need to keep an eye on the rip-current flags.

New Orleans has the Audubon Zoo, the riverfront aquarium, City Park's carousel and children's museum, and streetcar rides that younger children love. Bourbon Street at night and some areas after dark, though, mean parents have to plan more carefully.

In Destin you'll need a car. Everything strings out along a single coastal highway that clogs in summer, has few safe crossings and almost no public transport. Walking is limited to the harbour boardwalk and the bike trail along 30A.

New Orleans keeps its main sights in a compact, flat band by the river. The French Quarter, the Marigny and the Warehouse District are all walkable, and the slow but charming St. Charles streetcar reaches Uptown. You'll only need ride-hailing for the airport and the swamps.

Destin's shopping is standard American resort retail: a big outlet centre near Miramar Beach, an open-air mall and swimwear shops, with more stylish boutiques and galleries in the 30A towns. There's nothing local to hunt for.

New Orleans has more character. You'll find antiques and estate jewellery on Royal Street, miles of independent and vintage shops along Magazine Street, and hot sauces, pralines and Mardi Gras masks at the French Market. Neither is the place for designer labels.

Neither is cheap, and New Orleans comes out only a little easier on the wallet. Destin charges full resort rates for beachfront condos in season, and car hire, parking and charter fishing push the bill up. It becomes much cheaper in winter, when you can't swim.

In New Orleans the rooms take most of the budget, especially around Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. Day to day it's gentler: po'boys and the streetcar don't cost much, and street music and walking the Quarter are free.

Here the two are far apart. Destin's live music is mostly cover bands on bar decks, plus summer lawn concerts in the 30A towns and a regional symphony across the bay in Niceville.

New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz. Any night of the year you can hear brass bands, blues and zydeco on Frenchmen Street and in the clubs of Tremé, and there are second-line parades on Sundays and the Jazz & Heritage Festival in spring. Formal opera and theatre are thin, but that isn't why people come.

Destin is the more restful of the two, though neither city has a spa tradition. The resort spas around Sandestin and empty early-morning beaches in spring and autumn make for a quiet few days, at least outside the summer crowds.

In New Orleans, rest means slowing down rather than being pampered: a courtyard guesthouse in the morning, a streetcar ride under the oaks and an afternoon in City Park. The French Quarter at night works against all of it.