Kansas City or Pensacola?

There is no contest here. Kansas City is more than 1,000km from the sea, and swimming there means lakes in county parks and pools. That is fine for a hot afternoon but never the point of a trip.

Pensacola is built around its beaches: miles of white quartz sand on Santa Rosa Island and Perdido Key, clear green water that stays warm from late May into October, and calm shallows on the sound side for small children. In winter it becomes a beach for walking, and on rough days rip currents make the warning flags worth heeding.

Kansas City eats better, largely thanks to barbecue. Locals argue over hickory-smoked meat, sweet molasses sauce and burnt ends everywhere from old counters near the stockyards to petrol stations. Add the steakhouses from its cattle-town days and the Vietnamese and Ethiopian counters at the River Market.

Pensacola's strength is narrower. It does Gulf oysters, grouper and royal red shrimp at waterfront tables, and Palafox Street has a decent set of Southern restaurants. Away from seafood, and away from the chain-heavy beach strip, there is much less to explore.

Kansas City has the deeper sights. The Nelson-Atkins is a major art museum with a fine Chinese collection, the National WWI Museum is the country's main memorial to that war, and 18th and Vine holds the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and the American Jazz Museum.

Pensacola's appeal is history on a smaller scale: the colonial and Victorian houses of the Seville district, the brick bulk of Fort Pickens and the huge naval aviation collection, which sits on a working base with ID checks. Each city covers its essentials in two or three days, but Kansas City's days are far richer in art.

Neither city is a reason to go out, and both go quiet early midweek. Kansas City spreads its evenings across separate districts: sports bars in the Power and Light District, a student strip in Westport, and craft beer and cocktails in the Crossroads. You need a car or a ride to get between them.

Pensacola's nights are more compact and more seasonal. You'll find pubs, rooftop terraces and taprooms on Palafox Street and in the Seville Quarter, beach bars with sand floors on the island in summer, and the rowdy roadhouse on the Alabama state line at Perdido Key.

Pensacola is the better place to be outdoors, as long as you want water rather than hills. The national seashore has dunes, salt marsh, and boardwalks for watching herons and ospreys. Dolphins swim in the bay, the Blackwater River has canoeing on clear, sand-bottomed water, and divers have the sunken aircraft carrier offshore.

Kansas City's outdoors are gentler and more suburban. There is the huge Swope Park, Loose Park's rose garden, trails along the creeks, and reservoirs for boating and fishing amid rolling prairie. Serious hiking means a drive of several hours to the Ozarks.

Pensacola has the better outings. Mobile, about an hour west, is a proper city with antebellum streets, a long Mardi Gras history and a battleship on the bay. Fairhope, Fort Morgan and the resort towns along the coast to the east add more, though most of those are beach towns again.

Kansas City's excursions make pleasant half days: Truman's home in Independence, the university town of Lawrence, the river town of Weston and the Pony Express museum in St Joseph. Around either city, a car is essential.

Both work well with children, but for different kinds of trip. Kansas City is about attractions: Worlds of Fun and its water park, a large zoo, Science City inside Union Station, and the aquarium and Legoland centre at Crown Center, with a lot of driving between them.

Pensacola is a beach vacation first. It has warm, calm water, shallows on the sound side for toddlers and condos with kitchens, plus aircraft at the aviation museum and tunnels to explore at Fort Pickens. There are no theme parks, and you'll need to plan around the summer heat and storms.

Both are car cities, but Kansas City is a little easier without one. Its streetcar along Main Street links the River Market, downtown, Union Station and Crown Center, so staying near the line allows a car-free day or two.

In Pensacola, only the downtown is walkable, and a beach trolley runs in season. The island, the naval air station and Perdido Key are reached over highways and bridges, so nearly every outing is a drive.

Kansas City has more to browse. The Country Club Plaza is a handsome Spanish-style district from the 1920s with chain and upmarket stores. The Crossroads, Westport and 39th Street add galleries, vintage clothes, records and thrift stores.

Pensacola's shopping comes down to a few boutiques and antique shops on Palafox Street, the Saturday market, a regional mall and swimwear on the beach. Neither city is a shopping destination, but Kansas City fills an afternoon more easily.

Costs come out about the same, and neither is a budget trip. In both cities most visitors need a hire car, and the main museum is free to enter.

In Kansas City the costs build up as you go along. Tax and a tip are added to every restaurant bill and bar tab, and for a family the tickets to the theme park, the zoo, the WWI museum and ball games mount up. In Pensacola, timing matters most. Beachfront rooms cost the most in summer and on long weekends and drop sharply out of season, beds inland are cheaper, and the national seashore costs little.

Kansas City is far stronger for a night of music or theatre. Jazz took shape here with Count Basie and Charlie Parker, and small clubs around 18th and Vine still play it most nights, often with late jam sessions. The Kauffman Center is home to the symphony, opera and ballet, and the open-air Starlight Theatre stages musicals in summer.

Pensacola's stage is busy for a city its size, centred on the restored 1925 Saenger Theatre with its own symphony, opera and ballet. It makes for a pleasant regional calendar, but without a sound of its own.

Neither city has a spa tradition, so the difference lies in how easy it is to slow down. Pensacola has the edge. Outside the summer peak, the island and Perdido Key are quiet, uncrowded stretches of sand where switching off takes no effort, and the larger beach hotels have day spas.

Kansas City offers hotel and suburban spas and the old mineral-water resort of Excelsior Springs, about forty minutes north. Otherwise, relaxing there means a calm morning in Loose Park or the Nelson-Atkins sculpture park.