Kingston or Punta Cana?

This is Punta Cana's whole reason for being. It has around 50km of pale sand, from polished Juanillo through resort-lined Bávaro to wilder, surfier Macao, mostly kept calm by the reef. Boats also run out to Saona Island. The one catch is the sargassum seaweed some summers bring, which resorts rake away each morning.

Kingston sits on a working harbour, and the waterfront is for strolling, not swimming. The good water is a boat ride away at Lime Cay or a loud, fish-fry afternoon at Hellshire, so a beach day there is an outing, not the backbone of the trip.

Kingston gives you Jamaican cooking where Jamaicans eat it: jerk smoked over pimento wood in oil-drum grills, patties, curry goat and oxtail at lunch counters, and the produce piled up in Coronation Market. Blue Mountain coffee and rum come from close by.

In Punta Cana most meals come from resort buffets and themed dining rooms, generous but forgettable. Real Dominican food, such as la bandera, sancocho or mangú, means seeking out the comedores used by local workers, and there is no market culture to explore.

Kingston has a real story to tell, even if it is not one of grand monuments. It runs through Marley's home and Trench Town, the National Gallery's Jamaican collection, Georgian Devon House and the sunken pirate town of Port Royal, enough for two or three days.

Punta Cana is a resort coast built from the 1970s, with no old town or museums. For heritage, you have to leave it.

Kingston's nights belong to dancehall: weeknight street parties with towering sound systems in neighbourhood lanes, running until dawn. It is a scene found nowhere else, but the best events are hard to find without a local, and some are in districts not to wander alone. Uptown rum bars and lounges around New Kingston are the calmer option.

Punta Cana's evenings are mostly lobby bars and resort discos that wind down around midnight. Bávaro adds glossy party-show clubs, a club in a limestone cave and colmados playing bachata. It is fun for one or two big nights, but it is made for visitors rather than grown from local life.

Kingston has mountains on its doorstep. The Blue Mountains rise to 2,256m, with night hikes to the summit for sunrise, cloud forest, coffee terraces and birds found only in Jamaica, though the slow roads mean going with a driver.

Punta Cana is flat scrub and coconut groves, so its outdoors is on the water: snorkelling and diving the reef, kitesurfing at Cabeza de Toro, and boats to Saona's starfish pool. Inland there are only short lagoon trails and the Hoyo Azul sinkhole.

From Kingston, Spanish Town's Georgian square is half an hour away, and Port Royal makes an easy half day. The north coast and quiet Port Antonio are within a long day's reach, and there are coffee estate tours up in the hills.

From Punta Cana, the closer options are the basilica town of Higüey and the mock-Mediterranean village of Altos de Chavón. The trip most worth making, Santo Domingo's Zona Colonial, takes about two and a half hours each way, which makes for a very long day.

Punta Cana is set up for parents. Resorts with kids' clubs, waterslides and family suites sit on calm, gently shelving beaches. Zip-line parks and Saona catamarans fill the days out, though each outing needs a taxi or tour, and you should plan for strong sun and mosquitoes.

Kingston offers Hope Zoo, the lawns of Devon House and a boat to Lime Cay, and little else aimed at children. Heat and traffic make it a hard city with a pushchair.

Neither place is easy without a car. Kingston at least has city buses, route taxis and ride-hailing to link its spread-out districts, though most visitors end up with hotel taxis or a hired driver, and pavements are patchy.

Punta Cana has no centre at all, just resorts strung along the coast behind gates. Beyond strolling the sand between hotels, you depend on transfers, tour pickups or the guaguas on the main road.

Both offer local goods rather than fashion. Kingston's are coffee, rum, hot sauce and reggae vinyl from the downtown record shops, with plain malls uptown.

Punta Cana's draw is larimar, a blue stone found only on Hispaniola, along with cigars and faceless dolls, bargained for at Bávaro's beach stalls. Its open-air malls carry a few more upscale labels.

The overall cost is similar, but the money goes in different places. In Kingston, local food is cheap, while business-class hotels and the drivers you need to get around are what push the bill up.

Punta Cana's all-inclusive packages can be good value, especially bundled with flights, but fixed-fare taxis, excursions and beachfront restaurants outside the package add up quickly.

Kingston is where ska, rocksteady, reggae and dub began, and you can still hear roots and dub sessions on sound systems in the hills. On stage there is the National Dance Theatre Company, the Little Theatre's national pantomime and the historic Ward Theatre.

Punta Cana has no theatre or concert hall. You get resort shows, acrobatic spectacles in Bávaro and live merengue and bachata at beach bars, which is genuine music but light entertainment.

Punta Cana makes slowing down easy. Resort spas with hydrotherapy circuits and cacao or coconut treatments, massages under palm shelters and nothing pulling you away add up to an unhurried week, especially at an adults-only resort.

Kingston is loud and intense. Its bathing amounts to the simple pools of Rockfort Mineral Bath, or the hot springs at Bath, a long drive east. The real calm is in the small Blue Mountain retreats above the city.