Kas or Kusadasi?

Both towns are built for swimming, but in different ways. In Kas you swim from wooden decks and rock platforms into deep, very clear water that gets noticeably warmer. The only sand is at Kaputas and Patara, a drive or a minibus ride away.

Kusadasi is the one for sand. Ladies Beach and Long Beach are right by town and Pamucak lies to the north, though all are built up and crowded in summer. Its clearest water is in the Dilek Peninsula coves, the nearest thing it has to the swimming Kas has on its doorstep.

Both cook the same coastal Turkish food of meze, grilled fish and rakı, but Kusadasi gives you more room to choose. Its Kaleiçi fish restaurants and meyhanes, plus the lunchtime lokantas, offer more range than Kas. There, a few streets of restaurants serve much the same menu, and harbourside prices follow the yachts.

Kas has its own pleasures in slow village breakfasts and kitchens that use herbs from the Lycian hills. In Kusadasi the resort strips rely on buffets and international menus, so you eat best by walking away from the front.

Neither town has much to see within its own streets, and either can be covered in a morning. What Kas has is ancient: the remains of Antiphellos, with a small theatre facing the sea, tombs cut into the cliff and the Lion Tomb, among whitewashed Greek-era houses.

Kusadasi's sights are Ottoman: the fortified caravanserai in the centre, the small fortress on Pigeon Island, and a few old lanes in Kaleiçi with a mosque and a historic hammam.

Evenings in Kas mean a late dinner and a cocktail on a sea-view terrace. A few bars in the lanes stay busy past midnight in high summer, but there are no clubs to speak of.

Kusadasi offers a real night out. Bar Street keeps pubs, karaoke and dance bars going late all summer, and big open-air clubs around Long Beach and the marina run until the early hours, mostly for a young package crowd. Outside the warm months both towns go to bed early.

Kas has the more dramatic and varied outdoors. Limestone mountains drop straight into some of the clearest water in the Mediterranean, and the diving covers reefs, walls, caves and wrecks. The Lycian Way, paragliding from the mountain behind town and wading up Saklikent gorge are all close by.

Kusadasi's best card is the Dilek Peninsula national park, with its canyon walk, wild horses and the Büyük Menderes delta. Add the rocky hiking in the Latmos mountains above Lake Bafa, and it fills a day or two outdoors rather than a whole trip.

Kas sits in the middle of ancient Lycia. Boats reach the sunken city at Kekova and the castle village of Simena, Myra and the church of Saint Nicholas are at Demre, and Xanthos, Letoon and Patara lie to the west. Kastellorizo is a short ferry ride across the strait.

Kusadasi edges ahead because of one site: Ephesus, about twenty minutes away, with Selçuk, Şirince and the House of the Virgin Mary next to it. Priene, Miletus and Didyma make a second full day out, and in summer a ferry crosses to Samos.

Kas is calm and welcoming, but in town children swim from ladders into deep water and the lanes are steep. Families with small children end up travelling to Patara or Kaputas for sand. The town suits older children who can snorkel or want to try diving.

Kusadasi is the easier family base, with resort pools and two water parks on top of its gentle sandy beaches. Its limits are the midday heat in summer, busy roads in the centre, and Ephesus, which is a hard outing for small children in July.

Getting around works in much the same way in both: you walk the small, steep centre, take minibuses along the coast and use a hire car or a tour for anything further. The difference is where the buses go. From Kas they wind along the coast road to Kalkan, Kaputas, Patara and Demre, and boats cover the rest. From Kusadasi the dolmuş reaches the beaches and Selçuk, so you don't need a car for Ephesus, though many hotels are far out along the coast road.

Kas offers a gentle browse through one or two bougainvillea lanes of silver, linen, ceramics and kilims. It makes a pleasant evening but doesn't take long.

Kusadasi has much more to buy. The covered bazaar and the harbour streets are full of leather, carpets, jewellery and Turkish delight, and there is a modern mall, though the sales pitch is pushy, bargaining is expected and there are plenty of imitation goods. In both towns, the weekly market is the place for olive oil and spices.

Kas is the more expensive of the two. It is an upmarket small resort where boutique hotels, harbour restaurants, dives and boat trips cost about what they would in southern Europe. Back-street pensions, pide bakeries and travelling in spring or autumn bring the cost down.

Your money goes further in Kusadasi. Its mid-range hotels and all-inclusive packages cost less than other Aegean resorts, and dolmuş rides and lokanta meals are cheap. The main extra cost is entry to Ephesus and the other big sites, which adds up over several outings.

Neither town is a place to come for performance, and neither has a theatre or a concert season. The style differs a little. Kas has acoustic and Turkish folk sets in bars and the occasional concert in its ancient theatre by the sea. Kusadasi relies on hotel Turkish-night shows with folk and belly dancing, and cover bands in the bars.

The two help you unwind in different ways. In Kas it is the pace that does it: long breakfasts, sun decks above the sea, none of the noise of the big resorts and yoga retreats in the hills in spring and autumn. A few peninsula hotels have their own hammams.

Kusadasi offers more of the hammam itself, with a historic bath in the old quarter and scrub-and-foam treatments in most large hotels. The centre is loud in high summer, though, so for calm stay out of town or come in May, June or September.