Gulf Shores or Key West?

For a beach in the usual sense, Gulf Shores is far stronger. Its unbroken strip of white quartz sand runs from Fort Morgan to the Florida line, backed by dunes in Gulf State Park. In summer the water is warm and clear, though rip currents need watching.

Key West's water stays warm and calm for more of the year because the reef takes the swell. But its own beaches are small, with imported sand or coral rubble and seagrass close to shore. It suits snorkelling and boat days, and for a proper sandy beach day you drive an hour to Bahia Honda.

Both towns eat casual seafood from the surrounding waters, but Key West has more character. Its Cuban side, with café con leche and Cuban sandwiches from takeaway windows, plus stone crab, conch fritters and Key lime pie, gives its food a sense of place. Fried shrimp, oysters and Louisiana-style gumbo in Gulf Shores' big beach-bar restaurants don't quite match it, and there the better plan is often to buy Royal Reds at a seafood market and cook them in the condo.

Gulf Shores has almost nothing of its own beyond Fort Morgan, a brick star fort from the Battle of Mobile Bay that is worth a morning. For historic streets or museums you have to drive inland or along the coast.

Here Key West is in another league. Its whole Old Town is the sight, block after block of white conch cottages, verandaed Victorian mansions and old cigar-workers' houses, a wooden townscape few American towns can match. Add the Hemingway Home, the Truman Little White House and the shipwreck collections and you have a couple of full days, where Gulf Shores barely fills a morning.

Key West is a place to stay out late. Duval Street runs from bar to rooftop deck to old saloon into the small hours, with a long-established gay scene and Fantasy Fest in late October. The mood is loud and casual rather than stylish.

Gulf Shores has the same flip-flop mood but far less of it. There are beach-bar decks, the famous roadhouse on the state line at Perdido Key and a few bars that stay open late in summer, but most of the resort is asleep early.

Both are flat and watery, but Key West has the bigger prize offshore. The Florida Reef lies a few kilometres out, reached by snorkelling and diving boats every day. Behind the island are mangrove flats for kayaking and for fishing tarpon and bonefish, and the remote Dry Tortugas offer clear water and birdlife.

Gulf Shores is better on land. Gulf State Park has a long paved trail network through maritime forest, Bon Secour has dune trails, and the western end of the peninsula draws migrating birds in spring and autumn. Inland, the Mobile-Tensaw Delta is a huge river swamp to explore by kayak.

Gulf Shores has more within reach. Mobile with its ironwork balconies and the USS Alabama, bayside Fairhope, Pensacola's historic district and naval aviation museum, and the car ferry to Dauphin Island are all within about an hour by car.

Key West sits at the end of the road. The ferry to Fort Jefferson is a memorable day out, and the drive over the Seven Mile Bridge to Marathon is a pleasant one. Beyond that there is little, and Miami is too far for a comfortable day.

Gulf Shores is built for families. It has condos with pools, soft clean sand, a water park, a small hands-on zoo, a Ferris wheel in Orange Beach and a theme park in Foley for hot afternoons. Children need watching for rip currents, and you need a car for everything.

Key West works for children who love the water. It has glass-bottom boats, calm shallows at Fort Zachary Taylor, a butterfly conservatory and the Hemingway cats. But the drinking on Duval Street is never far away, and Fantasy Fest is strictly for adults.

Key West is far easier without a car. Old Town is compact and flat, bikes and electric carts are everywhere, and most sights are a short walk from the harbour. Reaching the rest of the Keys still needs wheels.

Gulf Shores stretches along one beach road, with everything else on inland highways, so you need a hire car, and the bridges clog up on summer weekends. Only inside Gulf State Park can a bike really replace driving.

Neither is a shopping destination, but Key West has more worth browsing. Alongside the T-shirt stands are Old Town galleries of tropical painting and local craft, hand-rolled cigars and sponge shops by the harbour. Gulf Shores has beachwear emporiums and surf and fishing shops, and its real draw, the outlet mall in Foley, is more a rainy-day errand than a pleasure.

Gulf Shores is clearly the cheaper stay. Condos with kitchens fall sharply in price outside June and July, the beaches and state park trails are free, and cooking for yourself keeps food costs down, though a hire car adds to the bill.

Key West is expensive in every season because land is limited and demand is strong, and boat trips and diving add up. Walking and cycling instead of driving helps, as do the Cuban takeaway windows, and late summer is the cheapest time to come.

Live music in both comes mostly from bar stages, but Key West has more variety. Songwriters and island-rock bands play along Duval every night, drag cabaret is a long tradition, and street performers fill Mallory Square at sunset. For something more formal there is the Tennessee Williams Theatre and a symphony in the winter season.

Gulf Shores has bands every day on beach-bar stages and a November songwriters' festival at the state-line roadhouse. Touring country and rock acts play the Orange Beach amphitheatre, while anything formal means driving to Mobile.

Neither has a bathing or spa tradition, so the restful side of both is simply slowing down. Key West does it with more charm, provided you stay away from Duval. It has guesthouses built round small pools and gardens on quiet Old Town lanes, easy yoga and massage, and the daily pause for sunset.

Gulf Shores offers a simpler kind of rest: a quiet condo balcony and early nights outside summer weekends, with a handful of resort spas for treatments.