Memphis or Sarasota?

The gap here could hardly be wider. Memphis sits on the Mississippi, which is fast, busy with barges and not for swimming, so a hotel pool or a drive out to a country lake is as close as it gets.

Sarasota is built around its beaches. Siesta Key has cool, powder-fine quartz sand, Lido Key is a few minutes from downtown, and Longboat Key and Anna Maria Island are quieter. The Gulf is calm and shallow, though red tide now and then closes a stretch of shore.

Memphis has a cuisine people travel for: pork barbecue as dry-rubbed ribs and pulled-shoulder sandwiches, local oddities such as barbecue spaghetti, and plenty of soul food, fried catfish and Delta tamales. Its weakness is range, with little international food or fine dining.

Sarasota eats well but plainly. Grouper sandwiches, stone crab and fish shacks by the water on the keys are the local strength, Main Street and St Armands Circle have the more polished dining rooms, and the Amish cooking and pie of Pinecraft are its one surprise. Few people plan a Sarasota trip around a meal the way they would in Memphis.

Memphis carries far more historical weight. Graceland, Sun Studio and the Stax Museum tell the story of early rock and roll and soul, and the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel is among the most moving museums in the country. Neither city has an old quarter to wander, so in both you plan your time around a few strong sights.

In Sarasota that means mainly the Ringling, whose Rubens canvases, Ca' d'Zan mansion and circus museum are worth a full day. The mid-century houses of the Sarasota School and the 1920s buildings of Burns Court interest architecture fans, but the list runs out sooner.

Memphis gives you a proper night out. At weekends Beale Street closes to traffic and becomes a loud, late party street where you carry your drink from bar to bar, and Overton Square and Cooper-Young have easier-going local bars and beer gardens.

Sarasota's evenings mean sunset drinks at the beach bars of Siesta Key Village or a glass of wine on Main Street, with an older crowd and an early finish. For anything bigger, people drive up to Tampa.

Both are flat, but Sarasota has far more wildlife on its doorstep. Myakka River State Park, with its prairies, treetop canopy walkway and alligators, is half an hour inland. On the coast you can kayak through mangrove tunnels and paddle Sarasota Bay among dolphins and manatees.

The outdoors in Memphis means the river and the parks: walking across the Big River Crossing into Arkansas, watching sunsets from the bluffs, and the lakes, bison and trails of Shelby Farms. It is pleasant, but more city park than wild country.

Both have a decent list of outings, but they point in different directions. From Memphis the road runs south into the Delta, to the juke joints and blues museum of Clarksdale, Faulkner's Oxford and Elvis's birthplace at Tupelo. It is a pilgrimage for music and history fans, through small towns.

From Sarasota the pull is north to bigger cities, the Dalí Museum in St Petersburg and Ybor City in Tampa, or south to the winter estates of Edison and Ford at Fort Myers. Either way, you need a car.

Sarasota is the easier place to bring children. The calm, shallow water off Siesta Key and Lido Key is ideal for small swimmers, the Mote Marine aquarium has sharks, turtles and manatees, and rentals with their own pools are common.

Memphis has a fine zoo in Overton Park, the planetarium at the Pink Palace and the daily march of the Peabody ducks, but its music and civil rights museums suit teenagers more than toddlers. In both cities, summer heat and long drives make outings hard work with young children.

Neither city works well without a car, and in both the buses are of little use to a visitor. Memphis has a walkable downtown with heritage trolleys on Main Street, but Graceland, Midtown and Shelby Farms are far apart in a city that sprawls.

Sarasota's walkable areas are smaller and spread out: downtown, St Armands Circle and Siesta Key Village. There is a free trolley on Siesta Key and good cycling on the keys, but traffic on the bridges in winter is the main frustration.

Neither city is a shopping destination, but Sarasota is the nicer place to browse. St Armands Circle has a ring of shops selling resort wear, jewellery and art, and Main Street and Palm Avenue add independent boutiques and galleries.

Memphis has no central shopping street. Its best finds are vintage vinyl and music memorabilia, with small boutiques in Cooper-Young and on Broad Avenue and the malls out in the eastern suburbs.

Memphis is clearly the cheaper of the two. Hotels are reasonably priced away from busy downtown weekends and the spring festivals, and a barbecue lunch is cheap and filling, though car hire, tipping and the admission at Graceland add up.

Sarasota is a resort with resort prices, highest on Siesta Key and Longboat Key from January to April, when the winter visitors arrive. Summer is cheaper and the beaches are free, but you need a car here too.

For most visitors Memphis has the edge, because the music is everywhere and on every night. House bands play blues and soul on Beale Street from the afternoon, Midtown venues have rock and hip-hop, and in the warm months the Levitt Shell, where Elvis once played, puts on free concerts on the lawn.

Sarasota's strength is the stage and the concert hall. Its opera, a ballet company known for its Frederick Ashton repertoire, a full orchestral season and the Asolo Repertory Theatre are unusually strong for a small city, though most of this runs from autumn to spring. Jazz and other live music turn up in some bars and at outdoor concerts, but there is no deep club circuit like the one in Memphis.

Sarasota is the place to slow down, with unhurried days on the sand, resort spas on Longboat Key and Lido Key, yoga on the beach at sunrise and the warm, spring-fed pool of Warm Mineral Springs to the south.

Memphis is a trip of late nights and heavy meals. Rest there means a hotel spa, or an early walk in Overton Park before the heat builds.