Louisville or Wilmington?

Louisville has no beach. The Ohio is a working barge river, so summer swimming means a pool or a drive out to the reservoir lakes. Wilmington has three distinct beach towns within half an hour: polished Wrightsville with its wide pale sand, Carolina Beach with its boardwalk, and quieter Kure Beach.

On the coast the sea is warm enough to swim in from late May into October. The drawbacks are the drive out, parking on summer weekends, and rip currents on rough days.

Louisville eats and drinks better, mostly because it has a subject: bourbon. The Whiskey Row bars and the distillery tasting rooms downtown make drinking a reason to come in itself. The hot brown, burgoo and Derby pie give the city a cooking of its own, and NuLu, the Highlands and Butchertown are where to eat it.

Wilmington's food comes from the coast: local shrimp, flounder and oysters, vinegar-sauced whole-hog barbecue, and a good crop of craft breweries north of downtown. It is pleasant for a few days, but fried seafood dominates at the beaches and fine dining is scarce.

Louisville has more to see: Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby Museum, the Muhammad Ali Center, the museums among the cast-iron fronts of Whiskey Row, the Speed Art Museum and the blocks of Victorian mansions in Old Louisville.

Wilmington's appeal is atmosphere more than institutions. Its large historic district of antebellum houses and live oaks, the Bellamy Mansion's account of the old port and the Battleship North Carolina across the river make a shorter and narrower list. Both cities fill two or three days, but Louisville's sights are more varied.

Neither city is somewhere to go clubbing, and in both a night out means bars. Louisville's are spread across town, from the long strip of dive bars and patios on Bardstown Road to the bourbon bars of NuLu. Some have licences to stay open very late, and Derby week turns the whole city out.

Wilmington's nights are concentrated on Front Street downtown, livened up by students at weekends, with casual beach bars added in summer. Weeknights go quiet out of season.

Wilmington's outdoors are on the water: kayaking to undeveloped Masonboro Island, surfing and paddleboarding off Wrightsville, fishing from the piers, and pine savanna trails in Carolina Beach State Park, where the Venus flytrap grows wild. It is completely flat, though, and the marshes bite in summer.

Louisville's outdoors are on land. Olmsted's wooded Cherokee and Iroquois parks, the fossil beds at the Falls of the Ohio, woodland hiking in Bernheim Forest and Mammoth Cave within a longer drive make it good for walking and running, but with fewer ways to get outside than the coast.

Louisville is the better base for days out, chiefly because bourbon country starts on its doorstep. Bardstown and the distilleries towards Frankfort and Lawrenceburg are close, and Lexington's horse farms and Keeneland, Shaker Village and Lincoln's birthplace are all easy outings. Take a tour or a designated driver for the distilleries.

Wilmington has a shorter list of small-town days. The best is Southport and the ferry to car-free Bald Head Island, passing Fort Fisher on the way, while New Bern and Beaufort are a two-hour drive north.

Both are easy, unhurried places with children, but the days look different. Louisville is built around attractions: the zoo, the hands-on Kentucky Science Center, Kentucky Kingdom's roller coasters and water park, and the underground tram tours and ziplines of the Mega Cavern.

In Wilmington the beach is the centre of the day, with old-fashioned boardwalk rides at Carolina Beach, the aquarium at Fort Fisher for wet days, and rental houses near the sand that suit families. Summer heat is a drawback in both, and on the coast rip currents mean keeping a close watch on the water.

You need a car in both, as neither has public transport a visitor can rely on. What differs is distance. Louisville's sights, from Churchill Downs to the Highlands, are short drives on easy roads. In Wilmington you can walk the compact historic district and riverwalk, but the beaches are 15km or more out, and summer traffic and parking slow you down.

Neither city is worth a trip for the shopping. In Louisville the souvenir to take home is a bottle of bourbon that is hard to find elsewhere, along with vintage clothes and records on Bardstown Road. Wilmington's equivalent is a wander through the independent bookshops, galleries and antique dealers on Front Street and in the Cotton Exchange, plus surf wear in the beach towns.

Day-to-day costs are similar: mid-range American prices, tax and a tip on top of every meal, and a hire car you can hardly avoid in either city. The expensive seasons are what differ. Louisville's hotels are moderately priced most of the year but jump to several times their usual rate in Derby week each spring. Wilmington's costs climb across the whole summer, as beachfront hotels and rental houses fill up.

Louisville has the fuller programme. The Kentucky Center is home to the Louisville Orchestra, Kentucky Opera and Louisville Ballet, Actors Theatre has a long record of staging new American plays, and bars on Bardstown Road have regular bluegrass and Americana.

Wilmington's scene centres on Thalian Hall, a restored 19th-century opera house, along with a community symphony and small theatre companies, plus summer concerts by Greenfield Lake and long-running jazz and blues festivals. It makes for a good night out, but not one to plan a trip around.

Wilmington is the easier place to switch off, with its slow pace, calm evenings on the waterfront and resort spas near the beaches. Louisville has only hotel and day spas. For a proper spa break you have to drive about an hour and a half to the old mineral-spring resorts of French Lick and West Baden Springs. Neither city has a bathing culture of its own.