Louisville or New York?

New York has real Atlantic beaches you can reach by subway: Coney Island with its boardwalk and old rides, Brighton Beach, and the longer surf strands of the Rockaways, with Jones Beach about an hour out. They make a good summer break from the streets.

Louisville has nothing comparable. The Ohio is a barge river with strong currents, and swimming means a pool or a drive to a reservoir lake in the Kentucky countryside.

Louisville eats well within a narrow range. Bourbon is the centrepiece, and the hot brown, burgoo and Derby pie in NuLu, the Highlands and Butchertown give a clear taste of Kentucky, but the choice thins quickly once you go beyond Southern cooking.

New York offers almost every cuisine in the world, cooked by the communities that brought it, from Flushing's Fujianese kitchens to the Tibetan places of Jackson Heights. On top of that come the slices, bagels and deli pastrami, and one of the world's deepest fine-dining scenes. For a food-led trip it is far ahead.

Louisville's sights tell its own stories: the Derby at Churchill Downs, Muhammad Ali, the Slugger bat factory and the Victorian mansions of Old Louisville. They make two or three rewarding days.

New York works on another scale. The Metropolitan Museum, MoMA, the Guggenheim and the Natural History museum would each anchor a city on their own, and they come with the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Brooklyn Bridge and whole districts of brownstones and cast iron.

A night out in Louisville means bars: the dives and patios of Bardstown Road, bourbon bars in NuLu, and the chain-bar block of Fourth Street Live for groups. Clubs are few, and the city only really lets loose around the Derby.

New York goes out every night and keeps going till dawn. You can choose between East Village speakeasies, West Village wine bars and Midtown rooftops, or head to the warehouse dance floors of Williamsburg and Bushwick, all linked by trains that run all night.

The two are close here, and both owe a lot to Frederick Law Olmsted. Louisville's Cherokee and Iroquois parks give wooded hills inside the city, and the Falls of the Ohio fossil beds, Bernheim Forest and Mammoth Cave, the world's longest known cave system, are all within a drive.

New York's outdoors is more urban but easier to reach without a car. Central and Prospect parks, the High Line and the waterfront walks fill the city itself, and Metro-North trains take you to the steep rocky climbs of Breakneck Ridge above the Hudson.

These are fairly even, but the outings differ in kind. From Louisville, nearly everything is a drive through rolling Kentucky: bourbon distilleries around Bardstown, horse farms and Keeneland near Lexington, and Shaker Village. It is one strong theme, done thoroughly.

New York edges ahead on range and on trains. Philadelphia's colonial old town is about ninety minutes away by rail, and Princeton, Yale and the Hudson Valley's Gilded Age estates, Dia Beacon and Storm King are all within a day without a car.

Louisville is the calmer, easier option. The zoo, the science centre, Kentucky Kingdom's coasters and water park and the underground ziplines at the Mega Cavern are all good, though you will need a car to get between them.

New York gives children more: dinosaurs and the planetarium at the Natural History museum, the Bronx Zoo, an aircraft carrier on the Hudson and the free Staten Island Ferry. The catch is stairs-only subway stations, small hotel rooms and tiring Midtown crowds, so staying near a park pays off.

Louisville expects you to drive. Downtown, the waterfront and NuLu are walkable, but Churchill Downs, the Highlands and the big parks need a car or ride-hailing. The upside is light traffic and easy parking.

In New York a car is a burden rather than a help. The Manhattan grid is easy to walk, the subway runs around the clock across four boroughs, and ferries and bike-share fill the gaps. The quirks are express lines, weekend reroutes and awkward airport links.

Louisville's shopping is small and local: some boutiques and galleries in NuLu, vintage and records on Bardstown Road, and above all the bourbon bottles you will struggle to find at home.

New York is one of the world's great shopping cities. It has the flagships of Fifth Avenue, the luxury houses of Madison Avenue, the department stores such as Bergdorf Goodman and Macy's, SoHo's fashion brands and Williamsburg's vintage racks. Its specialist shops for rare books, sneakers and cameras add even more.

Neither city is cheap, but Louisville costs clearly less. Hotel rooms are moderate outside racing season and many sights are free. The main extras are tips, sales tax and the steady cost of a hire car or ride-hailing, and Derby week is the big exception, when room rates jump to several times normal.

New York is among the costliest cities anywhere, with small, expensive Manhattan rooms, steep theatre and cocktail bills, and high museum fees. You can soften it with slices and Queens restaurants, the flat subway fare, the free ferry and parks, and a room in Brooklyn or New Jersey.

Louisville has a full set of companies for a city its size. The orchestra, opera and ballet perform at the Kentucky Center, Actors Theatre is known for staging new American plays, and Bardstown Road bars put on bluegrass and Americana. It is enjoyable, but not a reason to go.

New York is the reason many people go. It has Broadway, the Met Opera, the Philharmonic and City Ballet at Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall, and below those come the Village jazz basements, Harlem gospel and Brooklyn's indie stages, with something on every night.

Louisville has no bathing tradition, only hotel spas, porch afternoons and slow drives through horse country. For a proper spa you need to drive about an hour and a half to the old mineral-spring resorts of French Lick and West Baden Springs.

New York, for all its noise, has more to offer here. There is a century-old Russian and Turkish bathhouse in the East Village, banyas in Brighton Beach, and large Korean-style spas in Queens. When the crowds get too much, a quiet morning at the Cloisters or the Brooklyn Botanic Garden helps.