Gulf Shores or Louisville?

This is the widest gap between the two. Gulf Shores has a long strand of fine white quartz sand from Fort Morgan to the Florida line, with quieter dune-backed stretches in Gulf State Park and warm, clear water in summer. The one thing to watch for is rip currents.

Louisville is hundreds of kilometres from the sea, and the Ohio is a river for barges, not for swimming. The best it can offer is a hotel pool or a drive out to the reservoir lakes in the countryside.

Louisville eats and drinks better. Bourbon sets the tone, with tasting rooms and whiskey bars along Whiskey Row. The menus in NuLu, the Highlands and Butchertown carry dishes you won't find elsewhere: the hot brown, burgoo, Benedictine spread and Derby pie.

Gulf Shores is about Gulf seafood eaten casually, from Royal Red shrimp to chargrilled oysters at open-air shacks overlooking the water. It is satisfying, but there is little refinement or range, and many visitors simply cook fresh shrimp in their condo.

Louisville has far more to see. You have Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby Museum, the Muhammad Ali Center, and the Slugger and Frazier museums among the cast-iron fronts of Main Street. Add the Speed Art Museum and the Victorian streets of Old Louisville, and you can fill two or three days.

Gulf Shores has one real sight, the brick star fort at Fort Morgan, which fought in the Battle of Mobile Bay and is worth a morning. For anything more you drive to Mobile or Pensacola.

Louisville has more choice for a night out, nearly all of it in bars: dive bars and patios along Bardstown Road, cocktail and bourbon bars in NuLu, some late licences, and a city-wide party around the Derby. Gulf Shores means open-air beach decks with sand underfoot and frozen drinks. They get lively in summer and at spring break, but most of the resort is quiet early.

Both have a fair amount of outdoors, of very different kinds. Gulf Shores is low and watery: dunes, marsh and back bays, cycling trails through Gulf State Park, birding at Bon Secour, dolphin cruises, deep-sea fishing and kayaking in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta.

Louisville is about parks and woodland: the wooded hills of Olmsted's Cherokee and Iroquois parks, the fossil beds at the Falls of the Ohio, hiking in Jefferson Memorial and Bernheim forests, and Mammoth Cave within a drive. Pick the coast for time on the water and the city for walks in the woods.

From Gulf Shores, every outing means about an hour in the car: Mobile's ironwork balconies and the battleship USS Alabama, bayside Fairhope, Pensacola's naval aviation museum, or the car ferry from Fort Morgan to Dauphin Island. They make pleasant days out, but none of them is memorable.

Bourbon country gives Louisville the stronger list. Around Bardstown, Frankfort and Lawrenceburg you can tour and taste at the distilleries behind famous labels, ideally with a designated driver or on a tour. Lexington's white-fenced horse farms, Shaker Village and Lincoln's birthplace add variety beyond the whiskey.

Gulf Shores is the easier family vacation because the whole resort is designed around children: condos with kitchens and pools, soft sand, a water park, a small zoo and the Ferris wheel at Orange Beach. Rip currents and the summer heat are the things to watch.

Louisville makes a good city stay with children, with a well-regarded zoo, the Kentucky Science Center, Kentucky Kingdom's coasters and water park, and underground ziplines at the Mega Cavern. What it lacks is the simple pleasure of a day on the sand.

You will need a car in both, but Louisville is a little easier without one. Downtown, the waterfront and NuLu are walkable, and the short distances make ride-hailing practical for Churchill Downs or the Highlands. Gulf Shores stretches for miles along one beach road with almost no public transport. Beyond your own stretch of sand and the Gulf State Park bike trails you drive, and traffic on the bridges is slow on summer weekends.

Neither is a shopping destination, but Louisville has more character. NuLu has design shops and galleries, Bardstown Road has vintage clothing and records, and bourbon bottles that are hard to find elsewhere make the best thing to take home. Gulf Shores has beachwear emporiums, surf and fishing shops, and the big outlet mall in Foley for a rainy day.

Overall costs are similar, and what matters is when you go. Gulf Shores is expensive in June and July but much cheaper in winter and the shoulder months, and with a condo kitchen and free beaches your daily spending stays low.

Louisville has moderately priced hotels for most of the year, though restaurant tips, sales tax and a hire car add up. Derby week in spring is the time to avoid, when room rates jump to several times normal.

Music in Gulf Shores is informal. Bands play every day on the beach-bar stages, the state-line roadhouse holds a long-running songwriters' festival every November, and the Orange Beach amphitheatre brings touring country and rock acts in the warmer months. For theatre or classical music you have to drive an hour to Mobile.

For an evening in a concert hall or theatre, Louisville has much more on. The Kentucky Center is home to the Louisville Orchestra, Kentucky Opera and Louisville Ballet, and Actors Theatre is known for staging new American plays. In summer there is Shakespeare in Central Park, and the bars on Bardstown Road have regular bluegrass and Americana.

Neither has a spa tradition, so relaxing comes down to the pace, and here Gulf Shores has a slight edge. Outside summer weekends the town is quiet, and a slow week of sunsets from a balcony is the whole point. Louisville has hotel spas and lazy afternoons on Highlands porches, and for a proper spa break the old mineral-spring resorts of French Lick and West Baden Springs are about an hour and a half's drive away.