Memphis or Nashville?

Neither city is a place for the water. Memphis has the Mississippi, which is fast, busy with barges and not for swimming, so cooling off means a pool, a splash pad or a drive to a country lake.

Nashville does a little better because of the reservoirs on its edge. Percy Priest and Old Hickory lakes have small swimming areas and warm water in summer, and a pontoon afternoon there makes a pleasant break from the heat.

Both are serious Southern eating cities, and the difference lies in the signature dishes. Memphis is about pork: dry-rubbed ribs, pulled shoulder sandwiches with slaw, and oddities like barbecue spaghetti, alongside catfish and Delta tamales.

Nashville builds around fiery hot chicken and the meat-and-three cafeteria, with Tennessee whiskey to drink. It also has a slightly wider reach beyond the regional food, with the modern kitchens of East Nashville and the Gulch and the Kurdish, Mexican and Vietnamese places along Nolensville Pike.

Memphis has the more powerful sights. The National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel is among the most affecting museums in the country, and Graceland, Sun Studio and Stax cover rock and roll and soul where they began. The historic centre is patchy, so the time goes to these few strong museums.

Nashville's sights are mostly about country music, led by the Country Music Hall of Fame and a daytime tour of the Ryman. The Parthenon replica, the Frist in its Art Deco post office and the Hermitage add some range, but the city as a whole feels modern.

Nashville is the stronger night out. Lower Broadway runs for several blocks of multi-storey honky-tonks with a band on every floor, rooftop bars above and crowds until the small hours, and East Nashville and Midtown give you somewhere calmer to go.

Memphis has a smaller version of this on Beale Street, where you can carry a drink between bars at weekends, plus the easier-going bars of Overton Square and Cooper-Young. Away from those pockets downtown empties early, and neither city has much club culture.

Nashville has the gentler and more varied surroundings: wooded hills, limestone creeks, the Radnor Lake reserve, forest walks in the Warner Parks, canoeing on the Harpeth and cycling on the Natchez Trace Parkway.

Memphis is flat floodplain, and the river is its landscape. Walking across the Big River Crossing into Arkansas, watching sunsets from the bluffs and spending a day in the large Shelby Farms Park, with its lakes and bison herd, are the highlights. There is good bottomland forest at Meeman-Shelby, but no hills.

The day trips are about equally good and appeal to different interests. From Memphis you drive south on Highway 61 into the Delta, following the Blues Trail to Clarksdale's juke joints, or head to Faulkner's Oxford, Tupelo or the battlefield at Shiloh.

Nashville's outings are closer and tidier. Franklin's Main Street and Civil War sites are half an hour away, and you can visit the whiskey distilleries around Lynchburg, Leiper's Fork or Chattanooga at a stretch. Both lists need a car and lead mostly to small towns.

Nashville is the easier city with children. The zoo at Grassmere, the Adventure Science Center, the Lane Motor Museum, the Parthenon and a lakeside water park fill several days, as long as you keep away from Lower Broadway at night.

Memphis has a fine old zoo in Overton Park, the Pink Palace planetarium, a children's museum and the open space of Shelby Farms. After that, its headline museums on civil rights and music suit teenagers more than young children, and the heat and distances weigh more heavily.

Both are car cities with a walkable downtown core, so expect to hire a car or rely on ride-hailing either way. Memphis adds heritage trolleys on Main Street, but Graceland, Midtown and Shelby Farms are spread far apart. Nashville's compact centre links Broadway, the Gulch and the riverfront with a pedestrian bridge, but interstate traffic and downtown party vehicles slow every drive.

Nashville gives you more reason to shop. Lower Broadway's boot and hat shops, the guitar stores and the old letterpress concert posters make for distinctive buys, and 12 South and East Nashville have independent boutiques.

In Memphis the best finds are vintage vinyl and blues and Elvis memorabilia, along with small boutiques in Cooper-Young and on Broad Avenue. Anything mainstream means driving to suburban malls.

Memphis is the cheaper stay. Hotels are reasonably priced outside the busiest weekends and the barbecue and soul food are filling for little, though car costs, tips and full-price entry to Graceland still add up.

Nashville is expensive by comparison, especially for downtown hotels at weekends when groups are in town. Its saving grace is that the Broadway bands play without a cover charge, and staying midweek or eating at hot chicken counters helps.

Memphis gives you blues and soul in the city that helped shape both, and there is some on any night of the year, from the clubs along Beale Street to free summer concerts in Overton Park. The range is narrower than Nashville's, though. The symphony, opera and ballet are a modest side to a trip that is really about roots music.

Nashville goes both deeper and wider. Country is at its centre, with the Grand Ole Opry several nights a week and touring acts of every genre playing the Ryman, but what sets it apart is the songwriter night, where the people behind the hits play them on acoustic guitar in small rooms. Bluegrass and Americana fill other stages, and the Schermerhorn hall and the Tennessee Performing Arts Center give concerts, ballet and opera a much stronger place than they have in Memphis.

Neither city is a place to unwind, and wellness in both means a hotel or day spa. The quiet moments differ in setting. In Memphis they come at the river bluffs at dusk or in Overton Park early in the day. Nashville offers leafy Belmont and Hillsboro, with porch-front cafés and Radnor Lake's calm trails nearby.