Detroit or St. Louis?

Neither city is a beach destination, but Detroit at least has fresh water you can swim in. Belle Isle has a small sandy beach, and the long, shallow shore at Lake St. Clair Metropark makes a pleasant summer afternoon from July to early September.

St. Louis has nothing like it. The Mississippi and Missouri are fast working rivers, so in its humid summers cooling off means a pool or a long drive to an Ozark reservoir.

Both cities eat well without being food destinations, and each has dishes you will not find elsewhere: Detroit's Coney dogs and thick, crisp-edged square pizza against St. Louis's toasted ravioli, Provel-topped cracker-crust pizza and gooey butter cake. Each also has a big old Saturday market, Eastern Market and Soulard Market.

The difference lies in where the best meals are. Detroit's strength is the Lebanese and Yemeni cooking of Dearborn, along with Mexicantown and the Polish bakeries of Hamtramck, which often means a drive. St. Louis keeps its character closer in, with Italian trattorias on the Hill, Bosnian grills on South Grand, serious rib barbecue and a brewing tradition centred on the Anheuser-Busch brewery.

The two are closely matched, but they reward different kinds of sightseeing. Detroit's draws are a few big collections: the Detroit Institute of Arts with Diego Rivera's industry murals, the Henry Ford museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn, the Motown Museum, and a downtown of Art Deco towers such as the Guardian Building.

St. Louis is built around one great monument, the Gateway Arch, with free museums in Forest Park, the mosaics of the Cathedral Basilica and the Wainwright Building in the history of the skyscraper. It also keeps whole streets of red-brick and Victorian housing in Soulard and Lafayette Square, which are good for walking, while Detroit has long, uneven stretches between its sights.

Detroit has the more serious night out, and it is all about the music. As the birthplace of techno it has small committed clubs, warehouse parties and after-hours events, with its electronic music festival on Memorial Day weekend as the high point, plus cocktail bars and taprooms in Corktown and Midtown.

St. Louis is easier-going and more local: old taverns and blues bars in Soulard, dance bars on Washington Avenue, the Grove as the late-night LGBTQ+ strip and a student crowd on the Delmar Loop. In both cities the scene is scattered, so expect taxis between neighbourhoods and quiet weeknights.

St. Louis has the better countryside. Within an hour, the land rises into the wooded Ozark foothills, with river bluffs, caves and trails at Castlewood and Meramec, and further south are the boulders of Elephant Rocks and the rock pools of Johnson's Shut-Ins. The Katy Trail suits cyclists, and in winter bald eagles gather on the bluffs near Alton.

Detroit's outdoors are flat and focused on the water: Olmsted's Belle Isle, the RiverWalk, a ring of metroparks with wetlands, and sailing or kayaking on Lake St. Clair. That is more paddling than St. Louis offers, but there are no hills nearby.

St. Louis has the more memorable excursions, and the best is close by: Cahokia Mounds, the UNESCO-listed remains of a great pre-Columbian city about twenty minutes across the river. Add the French colonial houses of Ste. Genevieve, the German wine towns of Hermann and Augusta, Mark Twain's Hannibal and Lincoln's Springfield, and the choice has real history.

From Detroit the outings are pleasant rather than special: university town Ann Arbor, Bavarian-themed Frankenmuth, Toledo's excellent art museum and Cedar Point's roller coasters. Its unusual extra is Windsor, a quick crossing into Canada with a passport. Both cities need a car for almost all of these.

St. Louis is clearly better for children. The City Museum, a converted shoe warehouse full of tunnels, slides and rooftop climbing frames, has no equal in Detroit, and the zoo and the science centre with its planetarium in Forest Park are both free. The Magic House, the Arch tram pods and an easy evening of baseball add to that.

Detroit has a good set of things to do, including the large zoo in Royal Oak with its polar bear tunnel, the Michigan Science Center and the steam trains of Greenfield Village, but they are more spread out. Its long winters also cut the outdoor options more sharply than St. Louis's hot summer afternoons do.

Both are car cities, and in both you will probably end up driving or using taxis. What differs is the bit of rail each provides. Detroit's People Mover and QLine streetcar link downtown, the riverfront and the Midtown museums, which is handy for a stay focused on the centre.

St. Louis's MetroLink is more useful when you arrive, running from the airport through Forest Park and the Central West End to downtown. Its roads are uncongested and parking is easy, so driving there is less trouble than in Detroit.

Neither city is worth the trip for shopping, and in both the big brands sit in suburban malls. Detroit has a little more of its own to sell, with Detroit-made watches, leather goods and prints in the boutiques of Midtown and Corktown, and Dearborn's specialist sweets and groceries.

In St. Louis the best browsing is Cherokee Street's antiques, vintage and record shops, plus the student-flavoured shops of the Delmar Loop. It makes a pleasant afternoon but has less that is truly local.

Detroit is the cheaper of the two. Hotel rooms are noticeably cheaper than in most large US cities, and Coney dogs, pizza and Middle Eastern meals cost little, though rates downtown jump on game and concert nights.

St. Louis is not far behind and gets some of it back with free entry to the zoo, art museum, history museum and science centre in Forest Park. In both cities tips, sales tax and the cost of a hire car make a stay cost more than it first seems.

These are two strong music cities, each with an admired symphony orchestra, an opera company and a gilded Fox Theatre from the movie-palace era. Detroit's tradition is jazz, soul and Motown, with long-established jazz clubs, live bands most nights and the free Detroit Jazz Festival over Labor Day weekend.

St. Louis is a blues city, home to Chuck Berry and the National Blues Museum, with blues bars in Soulard. Its distinctive summer offering is the Muny, which stages musicals outdoors in Forest Park, along with the Opera Theatre's early-summer festival, so it has the stronger theatre in summer.

Neither city is somewhere to go for rest, as neither has any spa or bathing tradition beyond hotel and day spas. The quiet moments are different, though. In Detroit they mean a walk along the RiverWalk or an afternoon on Belle Isle, while St. Louis offers the Japanese garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden, slow mornings in Forest Park and a generally slower pace.