Marco Island or St. Augustine?

Marco Island has the better beach, and the beach is the centre of the stay. A broad crescent of fine sand runs along the hotel strip, the Gulf is calm with no surf, and Tigertail's tidal lagoon and sandbar are good for wading. The water stays swimmable further into the cooler months, and the undeveloped barrier beach on Keewaydin Island is a short boat ride away.

St. Augustine's Anastasia Island sands are wide and pleasant, from the dunes of the state park down to Crescent Beach, with gentle Atlantic surf in summer. The sea is greenish and churned rather than clear, though, and too cold for swimming in winter. The beach is also a drive from the old town rather than on your doorstep.

Both towns eat mostly seafood and neither has much depth, so the difference lies in flavour rather than quality. Marco Island leans towards waterfront grills and resort dining rooms, with stone crab claws in winter and the dockside fish platters of Goodland.

St. Augustine has a local accent of its own in the Minorcan datil pepper, which turns up in hot sauces, a spicy clam chowder and pilau, plus a few chef-led places around the old town and San Marco. For a serious dinner, people on Marco Island head to Naples and people in St. Augustine head to Jacksonville.

This is where the two differ most. Marco Island is a resort built from the 1960s on, and its cultural life comes down to one museum about the Calusa people and the carved wooden figures found on the island. Naples is the nearest place for galleries.

St. Augustine has the oldest continuously inhabited European-founded townscape in the United States, and it shows. The coquina star fort of the Castillo de San Marcos, the narrow balconied lanes of the Spanish quarter, Flagler's extravagant hotel, the Lightner Museum and the Cathedral Basilica fill two or three days of sightseeing.

Neither town is for clubbing, but St. Augustine at least has an evening scene. Its old-town pubs, taverns and courtyard cocktail bars around St. George Street fill with weekend visitors and college students, and Anastasia Island has a small beach-bar scene.

On Marco Island the night usually ends after sunset drinks and dinner on a waterfront deck. A few resort lounges and marina bars serve a mellow last round, and Goodland's dockside bars are busiest on winter afternoons rather than late at night.

Marco Island has the wilder setting. It sits on the edge of the Ten Thousand Islands, so mangrove kayaking, dolphin and manatee spotting and some of Florida's best inshore fishing all start from the island. Everglades National Park, Big Cypress and the Fakahatchee Strand, with their airboats and alligators, are within an hour.

St. Augustine's coast is a gentler mix of salt marsh, dunes and hammock forest. You can paddleboard in the Anastasia State Park lagoon, walk the marshes and go birding in the Guana Tolomato Matanzas reserve, or cycle the coastal road. It is pleasant, but it cannot match having the Everglades close by.

Both lists depend on a car, and St. Augustine's is a little longer and more varied. Jacksonville's museums and gardens, Victorian Fernandina Beach and the Daytona speedway give it more range, and Kennedy Space Center and the Orlando parks make long but popular days out.

From Marco Island the outings are Naples, the old trading post at Chokoloskee, the Edison and Ford Winter Estates at Fort Myers and the shell islands of Sanibel and Captiva, with Miami at the outer edge of a day. Its best excursions go into the swamps and islands rather than to towns.

Both work well with children, in different ways. Marco Island is the simpler beach vacation for small children, with shallow calm water, soft sand, wading at Tigertail and resort pools with children's programmes. Attractions such as the zoo mean a drive to Naples.

St. Augustine offers more to do away from the sand: the long-running Alligator Farm and its zipline, cannon firings at the fort, the lighthouse climb and pirate museums, all in a compact, safe old town. Older children who like history will get more out of it.

You need a car for both, but St. Augustine is easier once you arrive. Its historic district is small and flat, the main sights are minutes apart on foot and sightseeing trolleys loop between them, so many visitors park once and walk. The beaches still need a drive.

Marco Island is pleasant to cycle in the cooler months, but you need a car for almost everything off the island, from Naples and the Everglades to the airport, which is about three quarters of an hour away.

Shopping is a minor part of either trip, and the real difference is where it happens. On Marco Island the plazas sell resort wear, beach gear and shell souvenirs, and the serious shopping is half an hour away in the boutiques and galleries of Fifth Avenue South and Third Street South in Naples.

St. Augustine keeps its browsing in town. St. George Street has souvenir and fudge shops, Aviles Street has galleries, antiques and craft shops, and datil-pepper sauces make good things to take home. There is also an outlet mall by the interstate.

St. Augustine is the cheaper trip of the two, although neither is a budget destination. On Marco Island almost every bed is a beachfront resort room or a condo, and the months people come for, January to April, are also when those beds cost the most, so the winter warmth itself is the costly part. A hire car is close to unavoidable and there is little inexpensive food to balance it out. A summer visit or a weekly condo with a kitchen is the main way to bring the bill down.

In St. Augustine the expensive rooms are the historic inns and B&Bs near the old town, but chain motels by the highway or on Anastasia Island give you a real alternative, and a midweek stay avoids the weekend jump. Once the car is parked, much of the best of the town costs nothing: walking the Spanish lanes and the bayfront, seeing the fort from outside and spending time on the public beaches.

St. Augustine has a proper stage of its own: the open-air Amphitheatre in the woods on Anastasia Island, where touring rock, country and folk acts play through much of the year. Acoustic sets and cover bands play on the old-town patios most nights.

Marco Island has a small community theatre and musicians in the resort bars in winter. For an orchestra or a touring show you drive to the performing arts centre in Naples, home to its philharmonic, and outside winter there is little to see.

Neither town has a bathing tradition, so relaxing here means the pace and the spas. Marco Island does this better. Its big beachfront resorts have full-service spas and pools looking out over the Gulf, the plazas have yoga classes and day spas, and the whole island moves slowly.

St. Augustine's calm is gentler and more a matter of chance: a B&B veranda or an evening walk along the bayfront seawall. Spa options are limited to hotel treatment rooms and a few day spas, and busy weekends in the old town can break the mood.