Gulf Shores or Houston?

This is Gulf Shores' great advantage. Its fine quartz sand runs unbroken for miles, with low dunes in Gulf State Park and quieter stretches towards Fort Morgan, and the summer sea is clear and green on calm days. Watch the flags for rip currents.

Houston has no shoreline of its own. Its beach day means driving to Galveston, where the sand is long and the water warm and shallow, but the sea is cloudy with river sediment and seaweed sometimes piles up. That is fine for an afternoon with children, but not for a beach vacation.

Houston is far ahead here. Its cooking draws on Tex-Mex, Texas barbecue, Cajun-Vietnamese crawfish boils and whole neighbourhoods of Vietnamese, Chinese, Nigerian, Pakistani and Salvadoran food along Bellaire Boulevard and across the south-west. Montrose and the Heights add serious chef-led dining.

Gulf Shores does one thing well: fresh Gulf seafood, such as Royal Red shrimp, oysters and gumbo, eaten casually at open-air shacks overlooking the water. Beyond that the choice is narrow. Many visitors simply buy shrimp at the seafood markets and cook in their condo.

Houston has real cultural substance, almost all of it indoors. The Museum District groups fine art, natural science and contemporary art together, the Menil and the Rothko Chapel sit quietly in Montrose, and NASA's mission control is out at Clear Lake.

Gulf Shores has the brick star fort at Fort Morgan, a relic of the Battle of Mobile Bay, and a small local museum. Anyone who wants more has to drive to Mobile or Pensacola.

Houston gives you more choice of where to spend an evening, although the bars are spread out. You can drink at a Montrose neighbourhood or gay bar, in a Midtown or Washington Avenue lounge, or on an icehouse patio in EaDo, often with a ride between districts.

Gulf Shores has beach bars and little else: sandy open-air decks, frozen drinks and live bands, with the legendary roadhouse on the Florida line staying loud late. Spring break livens things up, but most of the resort goes to bed early.

Gulf Shores puts you closer to wild coast. Gulf State Park's trails wind through maritime forest and marsh, Bon Secour refuge protects dunes and lakes, and you can go out after dolphins, deep-sea fish or bayou paddling, with the vast Mobile-Tensaw Delta swamp further inland.

Houston's outdoors is mostly urban parkland, such as Buffalo Bayou and the woods of Memorial Park, plus alligators at Brazos Bend within an hour. Both places are good for spring bird migration and both are flat, with summer heat pushing activity into the early morning.

From Gulf Shores you have more choice within an hour's drive. Mobile has ironwork balconies and the USS Alabama, Fairhope has bayside gardens, Pensacola has its naval aviation museum, and the car ferry crosses Mobile Bay to Dauphin Island.

From Houston, Galveston is the main outing, with its Victorian Strand and East End. Otherwise you are looking at the San Jacinto battlefield or a longer drive to the farm towns around Brenham and Round Top, at their best in wildflower season.

Gulf Shores is built around families. You stay in a condo with a pool and a kitchen, the beach is soft, and on hot afternoons there are water parks, a hands-on zoo and the Ferris wheel at Orange Beach. Watch children in the surf because of rip currents.

Houston has the bigger attractions, with real spacecraft at Space Center Houston and the zoo, children's museum and dinosaur hall around Hermann Park. The trade-off is long drives between them and no beach on the doorstep.

Neither is a place to manage without wheels, but the problem differs. Gulf Shores is a resort strung out along a single beach road, and you can walk only within your own stretch of sand and its nearby bars. Bikes are useful inside Gulf State Park, while summer weekend traffic over the bridges slows everything else.

Houston is a sprawl of freeways with districts many kilometres apart, so most visitors drive or use ride-hailing. One METRORail line is the useful one for visitors, linking downtown, Midtown and the Museum District, which makes a car-free museum day possible.

Houston is the place to shop. The giant Uptown mall and the River Oaks boutiques carry the luxury labels, the Heights and Rice Village have vintage and independent stores, and Western boots and hats make a local souvenir.

Gulf Shores has beachwear emporiums, fishing shops and the outlet mall in Foley, which fills a rainy afternoon but is rarely a reason to go.

Overall costs are similar, but the money goes in different places. In Gulf Shores the price depends on the season: summer condos are dear, winter stays much cheaper, and the beaches, park trails and a condo kitchen cost little.

Houston's hotels are reasonable outside convention weeks, its taquerias and Asiatown noodle shops are cheap, and several major museums are free. The city's size adds car hire, parking and ride-hailing costs on top.

Houston has a complete performing arts scene in its downtown Theater District. Houston Grand Opera and Houston Ballet share the Wortham Center, the symphony plays Jones Hall and the Alley Theatre stages plays year-round. Live country, blues, zydeco and hip-hop play in smaller rooms around the city.

Gulf Shores offers bar bands, the long-running November songwriters' festival at the state-line roadhouse, and touring country and rock acts at the Orange Beach amphitheatre in the warmer months.

Neither place has a bathing tradition, and both offer little more than day and resort spas. The difference is the pace. In Gulf Shores the quiet comes from the resort itself, with sunsets from a condo balcony outside summer weekends. Houston is a busy city, and its calm is found in the Rothko Chapel, on the Menil lawns, or in a Korean-style bathhouse in the suburbs.