Kingston or Ocho Rios?

Ocho Rios is the beach town of the two. A reef close to shore keeps the water calm and clear, so you can swim and snorkel straight from Turtle Beach, Mahogany Beach or a resort's own strip. The beaches are small, though, and the best sand often belongs to all-inclusive hotels.

Kingston faces a harbour rather than a swimming shore, so beach days are outings: a boat to the sandbar at Lime Cay, or Hellshire, which people visit for fried fish more than sand. The sea is just as warm on both coasts. What differs is whether it sits outside your door.

Both towns have jerk grills, patties and fried fish with festival, but Kingston offers far more of it, and in more local settings. There are lunch counters for curry goat and oxtail, Coronation Market for the island's produce, Devon House for ice cream, and a few uptown restaurants cooking modern Caribbean food.

In Ocho Rios the good eating is mostly at the roadside jerk centres and cookshops towards St Ann's Bay. Many visitors are on all-inclusive plans, and the restaurants in town lean towards a tourist version of the cuisine, so eating well means making a point of leaving the hotel.

Kingston is where the story of modern Jamaica is told. It has the Bob Marley Museum on Hope Road, Trench Town Culture Yard and the National Gallery's collection of Jamaican art, with Devon House and the sunken pirate town of Port Royal for older history. Together they fill two or three days.

Ocho Rios grew up as a resort and has little of its own beyond Seville Heritage Park near St Ann's Bay, on the site of the first Spanish settlement. Visitors with a real interest in history usually end up making the drive to the capital.

Kingston has the stronger night scene by a long way, because dancehall is made there. Weeknight street parties with huge sound systems run until dawn, and around New Kingston and Barbican there are rum bars and lounges for a calmer evening. The best street events are best reached with a local who knows them.

In Ocho Rios most evenings end at the resort bar or theme night. A few beach bars and open-air clubs play reggae and dancehall, and some weekends bring a street dance, but there is no district to wander and quiet weeknights are the norm.

Both are strong for the outdoors, but in different ways. Kingston has the mountains. The Blue Mountains rise straight from the city's edge to the island's highest peak at 2,256m, with night climbs for the sunrise, cloud forest, coffee terraces and birds found only in Jamaica.

Around Ocho Rios the outdoors means water and shorter thrills: climbing Dunn's River Falls, swimming at the Blue Hole, tubing the White River, canopy rides and snorkelling on the reef. It is all small in scale and mostly guided. For serious hiking, choose Kingston. For splashing about in rivers and the sea, choose the north coast.

Ocho Rios is better placed, midway along the north coast with routes in both directions. Firefly, Noël Coward's hilltop home, is close by, and Nine Mile, with Marley's birthplace and grave, is an inland drive away. Falmouth and the great houses near Montego Bay fill a day to the west, and Kingston itself lies over the mountains.

From Kingston the choice is narrower: run-down Spanish Town, Port Royal for a half day, coffee estates in the hills and the north coast resorts. Much of the island's best-known ground needs an overnight stay from the capital.

Ocho Rios is built for a family beach week. It has a calm, warm sea, resort kids' clubs and shallow pools, and active outings for older children such as Dunn's River Falls, river tubing and the rainforest bobsled. The town is tiring on foot, but most families hardly need it.

Kingston has Hope Zoo and Hope Gardens, an afternoon at Devon House and a boat to Lime Cay, and little more made with children in mind. Heat, traffic and missing pavements turn every outing into a car journey.

Neither is easy without a car, and what differs is the scale. Kingston is a wide sprawl with no rail, where New Kingston, the museums, downtown, the mountains and Port Royal sit far apart, so taxis, ride-hailing or a hired driver become part of every day.

Ocho Rios has a compact centre, but traffic, patchy pavements and persistent drivers and vendors make walking it a chore. With resorts strung along the coast, visitors rely on transfers and tour pick-ups. In both towns route taxis are cheap but confusing for newcomers.

Neither is a shopping destination, but Kingston has more worth seeking out. Beyond the plain uptown malls are the downtown record shops where reggae vinyl was pressed and sold, the waterfront craft market and Jamaican-made gifts in the Devon House courtyards.

Shopping in Ocho Rios follows the cruise ships, with duty-free jewellery, watches and liquor near the pier and a craft market where bargaining is expected. Rum, Blue Mountain coffee and hot sauce are good buys in both.

Costs come out much the same, and in both towns roadside jerk stands and cookshops are where money goes furthest. The big costs differ. In Kingston they are hotels priced for business travellers and the taxis or driver you need to get anywhere. In Ocho Rios they are all-inclusive resort rates and tours charged at tourist prices. A simple guesthouse lowers the bill in either, and on the north coast the cheapest are up in the hills.

This is one of the widest gaps between the two. Kingston is the birthplace of ska, rocksteady, reggae and dub, and it still has weekly sound system sessions, the old studios around Orange Street and the concerts of Reggae Month. It also has formal stages, with the National Dance Theatre Company, the national pantomime at the Little Theatre and the historic Ward Theatre.

Ocho Rios has no theatre or concert hall. Live music there means resort reggae bands, folk shows put on for guests and the occasional dancehall stage show on a weekend.

Ocho Rios is the better place to slow down. Resort spas sit in garden or clifftop pavilions above the sea, and days behind the hotel gates are long and quiet, as long as you keep away from the town centre on cruise days.

Kingston is hot and loud, and its bathing is basic: the public pools of Rockfort Mineral Bath, or the hot springs at Bath, a long drive east. Its real calm is up in the Blue Mountains, where small retreats offer cool air and mist over the coffee terraces.