Havana or Miami Beach?

Miami Beach is built around its beach, with about 11km of wide sand right in front of the hotels, lifeguard huts and a beachwalk, and calmer stretches at Mid-Beach and North Beach for anyone escaping the South Beach crowds.

Havana's centre meets the sea with the Malecón's rock and sea wall, so swimming means half an hour east to Santa María del Mar or Guanabo. Their water is clearer than Miami Beach's green-blue Atlantic and the weekends there are lively and local, but there is little shade and the facilities are basic.

Miami Beach eats better and more widely: seafood, chef-led dining rooms, stone crabs in winter and a strong Latin American thread of croquetas, arepas and ceviche. The trick is to leave Ocean Drive for the side streets and North Beach.

Havana's cooking is narrower and depends on supply, with ropa vieja, black beans and roast pork at their best in the paladares of Vedado and Miramar. Its strength is the glass: daiquiris and mojitos in the bars that made them famous, aged rum and strong coffee.

Havana has far more to see. Habana Vieja's four colonial squares, the cathedral, the Morro and La Cabaña fortresses and the Capitolio fill days on their own, and Centro and Vedado add art deco, the Plaza de la Revolución and a fine Cuban art museum.

Miami Beach has one great sight, its 1930s Art Deco district, which is easy to walk and remarkably complete. Beyond that there are the Wolfsonian, the Bass and the Holocaust Memorial, and for deeper history you have to cross the bay to the mainland.

Miami Beach is the bigger night out: large clubs with guest DJs until dawn, pool parties by day and lobby bars on Collins and Washington Avenues, all glamorous, expensive and run with door policies.

Havana's nights are looser and centre on dancing. Locals fill the salsa clubs of Vedado and Miramar, the old town bars pour rum until late and crowds gather on the Malecón. There are few clubs as such, and getting between neighbourhoods means taxis.

Neither city has hills, but Miami Beach puts more within reach. You can paddle the bay or Oleta River's mangroves, snorkel the offshore reefs, and drive about an hour to the Everglades with their alligators and boardwalks, or to Biscayne National Park.

Havana's outdoors is mostly the Malecón and the Almendares park. The forest trails and river pools of Las Terrazas are about an hour west, and the limestone valley of Viñales is too far for an easy outing.

Miami Beach has more easy outings. Mainland Miami gives you Little Havana, Wynwood, Vizcaya and Coral Gables, and Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Key Largo are each within about an hour and a half.

From Havana the short list is Hemingway's Finca Vigía, Cojímar and the rumba port of Matanzas. Cuba's best places, Viñales, Trinidad and Cienfuegos, need overnight stays. In both cities most trips need a car or a tour, but hiring a driver in Cuba takes more arranging.

Miami Beach is the easier choice with children, because of its gentle water, lifeguards all along the shore, playgrounds behind the sand and resort pools in Mid-Beach and North Beach. The zoos and museums are on the mainland, though.

Havana gives children a warm welcome, plus the aquarium, classic-car rides and cannons at the fortresses. Its broken pavements, heavy heat and scarce baby supplies and medicines make it better suited to older children than toddlers.

Miami Beach is simpler to get around. South Beach is flat and compact, and free trolleys, buses up Collins Avenue and bike share cover the rest of the island. Only leaving it gets awkward, on crowded causeways and with no rail.

In Havana you walk the old town and the Malecón, and for anything further you agree a fare with a classic-car taxi, a shared almendrón or a coco-taxi. The buses are hard for visitors to use, and the uneven pavements and dim streets need care after dark.

Miami Beach offers more to buy, though little of it is distinctive. Lincoln Road's chain stores and Collins Avenue's swimwear are pleasant to browse, and the European fashion and jewellery houses are at Bal Harbour.

Havana has no fashion shopping at all and its shelves can be sparse. What it does have, which Miami Beach lacks, are things worth carrying home: cigars, aged rum, coffee, and paintings from the studios of Habana Vieja and Vedado.

Havana is much easier on the wallet if you stay in a casa particular, eat simply and use shared taxis. State hotels and the smarter paladares charge international prices, and cards are unreliable, so carry cash.

Miami Beach is expensive at nearly every turn: oceanfront rooms in winter, resort and parking fees, tipping and South Beach cocktails. A North Beach hotel, a summer visit and Cuban takeaway windows soften the bill, and the beach costs nothing.

Music fills Havana's days and nights. You hear son, bolero and rumba from midday in bars and courtyards, serious jazz in Vedado, weekend rumba in the Callejón de Hamel, and the Ballet Nacional de Cuba at the Gran Teatro.

Miami Beach's arts life is more formal and comes in seasons. It centres on the New World Symphony in its Gehry hall, sometimes projected for a lawn audience, and on Miami City Ballet. Club music there leans to DJs rather than live bands.

Miami Beach is the better place to unwind properly, with large resort spas, hydrotherapy circuits, sunrise yoga on the sand and calm pool days in Mid-Beach and towards Surfside, all at a price.

Havana has almost no spas, and its rest comes from slowing down: a rocking chair in a colonial courtyard, a shaded balcony, the sea from the Malecón at dusk. Heat, noise and traffic fumes mean staying in leafy Vedado or Miramar if quiet matters.