Gulf Shores or Nashville?

This is the clearest gap on the page. Gulf Shores sits on a long strand of white quartz sand running from Fort Morgan to the Florida line, with dunes in Gulf State Park and warm, green water through the summer, though you need to respect the rip-current flags.

Nashville is hundreds of kilometres from the coast. Percy Priest and Old Hickory lakes give locals a place to swim and take pontoon boats out on hot weekends, but that is a summer afternoon, not a reason to travel.

Nashville gives you more to seek out: fiery hot chicken, meat-and-three cafeterias, smoked barbecue and biscuits, plus modern Southern cooking in East Nashville and Germantown and a surprising row of Kurdish, Mexican and Vietnamese places along Nolensville Pike.

Gulf Shores is simpler. Royal Red shrimp, oysters, snapper and Louisiana-style gumbo are good at open-air shacks with water views, but there is little beyond Gulf seafood, and many visitors end up cooking market shrimp in their condo kitchen.

Gulf Shores has one real sight, the brick star fort at Fort Morgan with its part in the Battle of Mobile Bay, and after a morning there you have seen most of it.

Nashville fills several days, mostly with music: the Country Music Hall of Fame, the National Museum of African American Music and a daytime tour of the Ryman. Away from music there is the Parthenon replica in Centennial Park, the Frist in its Art Deco post office, and the Hermitage and Belle Meade for the region's harder history.

Nashville goes out much harder. Lower Broadway is block after block of honky-tonks with a band on every floor and crowds into the small hours, and East Nashville's dive bars and cocktail lounges offer something calmer. It is a drinking-and-live-music city, with few dance clubs.

In Gulf Shores a night out means sandy beach-bar decks and frozen drinks, with the state-line roadhouse at Perdido Key the one place that stays loud late. Spring break livens up the main strip, but most of the resort is quiet by mid-evening.

Gulf Shores has the edge, mostly because so much of it happens on the water. You can go dolphin watching, deep-sea fishing from Orange Beach, paddle the back bays, cycle the Gulf State Park trails, watch the spring and autumn bird migration at Bon Secour, or kayak the Mobile-Tensaw Delta swamps.

Nashville's country is gentler and green: wooded walks at Radnor Lake and the Warner Parks, canoeing on the Harpeth, and cycling the Natchez Trace Parkway. Unlike the flat coast it has rolling hills, and spring wildflowers and autumn colour make those seasons especially pleasant.

The two have about as much within reach, but of different kinds. From Gulf Shores the outings lean towards the coast: Mobile's ironwork balconies and the USS Alabama, bayside Fairhope, Pensacola's naval aviation museum, and the car ferry across Mobile Bay to Dauphin Island.

From Nashville they head inland to Civil War history and whiskey: Franklin's Main Street and battlefields half an hour away, the distilleries around Lynchburg, and Chattanooga's Lookout Mountain at the far edge of a day. Neither list has a famous name, and both need a car.

Gulf Shores is built around families: beachfront condos with pools and kitchens, soft sand, water parks, a hands-on zoo and the Ferris wheel at the Orange Beach waterfront. The main things to watch are the surf and the midday heat.

Nashville can work well with children if you plan around the Nashville Zoo at Grassmere, the Adventure Science Center and the Lane Motor Museum, but Lower Broadway is loud and adult after dark, and the sights are spread out.

You will need a car in either place, but Nashville gives you a little more without one. Its downtown is compact enough to walk between Broadway, the Ryman, the Hall of Fame and the Gulch, with the pedestrian bridge over the Cumberland, and ride-hailing covers the rest.

Gulf Shores is strung out along a single beach road with almost no public transport, so beyond your own stretch of sand and the park's bike trails, everything means driving, and the bridges get congested on summer weekends.

Music and cowboy style set Nashville's shops apart, and they make it the better place to browse. Lower Broadway sells boots, hats and rhinestone shirts, the guitar shops are among the best anywhere, and Hatch Show Print's letterpress concert posters make a lasting souvenir. Independent boutiques and record shops in 12 South and East Nashville add a quieter afternoon.

Gulf Shores mostly sells beachwear, souvenirs and fishing gear, and the outlet mall in Foley is its rainy-day fallback.

Gulf Shores is the gentler on the wallet, especially outside June and July, when condo rentals drop sharply. A kitchen keeps meal costs down, and the beaches and park trails cost nothing.

Nashville's downtown hotels are expensive, above all on weekends with group bookings, and the cost of eating, drinking, tips and ride-hailing soon adds up. Its saving grace is the free music in the Broadway honky-tonks, and staying midweek or outside downtown helps.

Nashville is in another league here. The Grand Ole Opry and the Ryman's pews anchor it, songwriter nights and bluegrass rooms carry the deeper scene, and the Schermerhorn and the Tennessee Performing Arts Center add symphony, ballet, opera and musicals.

Gulf Shores has cover bands on beach-bar stages, a summer amphitheatre for touring country and rock acts, and the state-line roadhouse's November songwriters' festival. For anything formal you have to drive to Mobile.

Neither city has a spa or bathing tradition, so you are left with hotel and day spas in both. Gulf Shores is still the more restful of the two, because outside summer weekends the town is quiet and slow, and a week of balcony sunsets is the whole idea.

Nashville's centre runs on noise and late nights. A calmer stay is possible in leafy Belmont or Hillsboro, but rest is never the reason to go.