Hurghada or Petra?

This is the sharpest divide between the two. Hurghada is a beach destination first, with about 40km of Red Sea coast, warm clear water and good sand on the Giftun islands and in the bays towards Makadi. The beach you get still depends on your hotel, and at many of them you swim from a jetty over reef flats.

Petra sits in the mountains with no water nearby. Swimming there means a hotel pool, if yours has one. The Red Sea at Aqaba is a separate stop on a tour of Jordan, not a beach day out.

Neither is worth travelling to for the food, but Hurghada has a little more to find outside the hotel. At the fishing harbour you pick your fish from the ice and have it grilled, and the koshary and taameya places of El Dahar are worth a few evenings away from the buffet.

Wadi Musa serves solid Jordanian standards such as mansaf, maqluba and zarb cooked in a pit, but mostly along one main road with no food scene behind it. Its best moments are simpler: sage tea at a stall inside the site, or a Bedouin meal in the hills.

Here Petra is in another class. The walk runs through the Siq to the Treasury, then past the Royal Tombs, the theatre and the colonnaded street up to the Monastery. It deserves two or three days, with the Petra Museum and Little Petra to round it off.

Hurghada grew from a fishing village and has little historic fabric. The pharaonic pieces in the Hurghada Museum fill a couple of hours, and El Dahar's market streets show ordinary Egyptian life. The great monuments of ancient Egypt are a long day inland at Luxor.

Hurghada at least has a night out, even if it is built for tourists. Evenings start at hotel pool bars and discos, then move to the bars, shisha lounges and beach clubs of Sheraton Road and the marina, which stay open into the small hours at weekends and in summer.

Petra has almost nothing after dark. Wadi Musa is conservative and goes to bed early, so evenings mean dinner, a shisha on a terrace and perhaps a hotel bar. There are no clubs, so anyone who wants a late night should save it for Amman.

Both are strong for the outdoors, with Petra a little ahead, but they offer very different things. Petra's nature is explored on foot: trails to the High Place of Sacrifice and Jebel Haroun, the back route from Little Petra to the Monastery, the juniper slopes of Dana and the red valleys of Wadi Rum.

Hurghada's best nature is underwater. Reefs start just offshore, there are turtles and dolphins around Giftun, and the wrecks are famous across the Red Sea. The steady wind also makes El Gouna and Soma Bay good for kitesurfing. On land there are desert jeep and quad-bike trips, but little hiking.

Luxor is the one great outing from Hurghada, and it is a hard one: first-rank temples and tombs about four hours away by road, which means a start before dawn or an overnight stay. Nearer at hand there is little beyond El Gouna's marina half an hour north, while the Roman granite quarries lie deep in the desert and are reached on a guided trip.

Petra's outings are shorter. Wadi Rum is about ninety minutes south, and Shobak castle and the village of Dana are closer still. Kerak and Aqaba fit better as stops on a road trip through Jordan than as return trips from Wadi Musa.

Hurghada is much easier with children, as long as you stay mostly inside the resort. Water slides, splash pools, kids' clubs, shallow sheltered beaches and boat trips over the reef keep young children busy. Midday summer heat and traffic in town need care.

Petra suits older, sturdy children who enjoy clambering into tombs, and Jordanians are warm towards them. With toddlers it is hard going: long walks over rock without shade, a tough climb to the Monastery, and a town with no parks or play areas.

Hurghada is one long coast road with few pavements, so almost every journey is on wheels. You get around by shared minibus, by taxi once you have agreed the fare, or by hotel shuttle, and many visitors simply rely on the transfers that come with their excursions.

At Petra the archaeological park can only be covered on foot, and that makes for a long day of climbing. Hotels higher up the hillside in Wadi Musa may be a taxi ride from the gate, and you need a driver or a rental car to reach Wadi Rum, Dana and the castles.

Hurghada has the wider souvenir range, with spices, perfume oils, alabaster and cotton galabeyas in the El Dahar markets and a few malls for everyday brands and supermarkets. Every price is haggled, though, and the sellers are insistent.

Petra's offer is smaller but more local: Bedouin silver and bead jewellery on the trails and bottles of coloured sand in Wadi Musa. The best buys are the embroidery and handmade goods in the women's cooperative shops.

Hurghada is far cheaper. All-inclusive packages put the room, meals and many drinks into one booking, and diving courses and boat trips cost much less than on most reef coasts. The extra costs come from marina restaurants and excursions sold through hotels.

Petra is moderate rather than cheap, mainly because the entry fee for foreign visitors is among the steepest at any heritage site. A multi-day ticket or a combined pass bought before arriving in Jordan softens this, and Wadi Musa's guesthouses and falafel counters are inexpensive, but drivers and tours add up.

Neither has a theatre or concert scene, so here you are choosing one evening rather than a programme. In Hurghada that means hotel belly dancing and folklore nights with tanoura dancers, at the hotels and at dinners in desert camps.

Petra has the more memorable single show in Petra by Night, when candles line the Siq and Bedouin musicians play the rababa in front of the Treasury. It is crowded, though, and how well it works depends on how quiet the audience keeps.

Hurghada is the more restful of the two. Days there can be nothing but a sunbed and a pool, and most large resorts have a hammam, a steam room and inexpensive massages. Quality varies, though, and the town outside is noisy.

At Petra, relaxing mostly means recovering: a scrub and steam in one of Wadi Musa's Turkish-style bathhouses after a day on the trails. The evenings are quiet, but the stay itself is hard on the legs, and the Dead Sea resorts are a long drive north.