Miami or Sarasota?

Both are first-rate beach destinations, but the beaches feel quite different. Miami Beach is one long Atlantic strip backed by hotels and apartment towers, from the Art Deco front of South Beach to quieter Surfside, with calmer coves at Key Biscayne. The water stays warm enough for winter swimming.

Sarasota's Siesta Key has finer, whiter quartz sand and a shallow Gulf with no real waves, and Longboat Key and Anna Maria Island feel residential rather than urban. The catch is a chilly sea in midwinter. Each coast has its own hazard to check, sargassum seaweed in Miami and red tide in Sarasota.

Miami is much the better place to eat. Cuban cooking runs through the whole city, from cafecito at the ventanita windows of Little Havana to slow-cooked lechon, and Venezuelan, Colombian, Peruvian, Haitian and Nicaraguan kitchens add to it. Brickell and the Design District have a serious upscale tier on top.

Sarasota shares the Gulf seafood, such as grouper sandwiches and stone crab claws, but beyond that it offers comfortable bistros on Main Street and St Armands Circle. Its one real surprise is the Amish and Mennonite cooking and pie in Pinecraft.

Miami has more to see. The Art Deco Historic District is a whole neighbourhood of 1930s architecture to walk through, and Vizcaya, the Perez Art Museum, the Wolfsonian, Wynwood's murals and the Cuban exile story of Little Havana add a few days of variety.

Sarasota's offer centres on one place. The Ringling, with its Rubens canvases, the Venetian Gothic Ca' d'Zan and the circus museum, is worth a full day, and fans of mid-century modernism can seek out Sarasota School buildings. After that there is little else, and no old quarter in either city.

Here the two are worlds apart. Miami has one of the best-known club scenes anywhere, with big rooms and international DJs in South Beach and downtown that run until dawn, plus Wynwood breweries, Brickell rooftop bars and Latin dance nights in Little Havana.

Sarasota's evenings are sunset drinks at the open-air bars of Siesta Key Village or a glass of wine on Main Street, with an older crowd that is home early. Anyone after a big night has to drive up to Tampa or St Petersburg.

Miami has the bigger landscapes on its doorstep. The Everglades lie on the western edge, with airboats, the Anhinga Trail and the Shark Valley cycle loop, and Biscayne National Park and the reefs of Key Largo offer snorkelling that Sarasota cannot match.

Sarasota's outdoors are smaller but close at hand. Myakka River State Park has its treetop canopy walkway and alligators, and you can kayak the mangrove tunnels off Lido Key or watch dolphins and manatees in Sarasota Bay. Both are flat, and both are best enjoyed in winter.

Sarasota has the better outings. St Petersburg, with the Dalí Museum and its waterfront, is about an hour across the Sunshine Skyway, and Tampa's Ybor City, the Greek sponge-diving town of Tarpon Springs and the Edison and Ford winter estates in Fort Myers give real variety.

From Miami the choices are thinner. Fort Lauderdale's canals, the Gilded Age mansions of Palm Beach and the seafood shacks of the Upper Keys make pleasant days, but Key West is too far for a round trip and works better as an overnight.

Both work well for families, but for different reasons. Miami has more to fill the days, including the open-air Zoo Miami, the Frost Science Museum's planetarium and aquarium, Jungle Island and the Venetian Pool in Coral Gables. The trade-off is long drives between them and a party scene in South Beach.

Sarasota is smaller and gentler, with the calmest water for toddlers, Mote Marine's sharks and manatees, and plenty of rentals with pools. Neither city is within easy reach of the Orlando theme parks, and in both a car is close to essential.

Neither is easy without a car, but Miami offers a little more. The elevated Metromover links downtown and Brickell, the Metrorail runs in from the airport, and South Beach is flat enough to walk or cycle. Ride-hailing fills most gaps, though Miami Beach has no rail link.

In Sarasota, downtown, St Armands Circle and Siesta Key Village are each walkable and a trolley runs along Siesta Key, but the buses are slow. In winter, traffic often backs up on the bridges to the keys.

Miami is a real shopping destination. The Design District has the flagship stores of the major fashion houses, Bal Harbour is about as exclusive as American malls get, and Aventura and the western outlets cater to anyone hunting for brands or bargains.

Sarasota's shopping is a resort pastime of resort wear, galleries and gifts around St Armands Circle and Palm Avenue. It does have a Saturday farmers' market downtown, something Miami largely lacks.

Both are expensive, and the costs fall in different places. In Miami the bills mount through resort fees, parking and South Beach drinks, softened by cheap Cuban bakeries, the free Metromover and staying on the mainland.

Sarasota is priciest on the keys from January to April. Its savings come from staying inland, low entry to the state parks and the quieter summer months. In both, the beaches cost nothing.

The two are broadly level, which is a real achievement for a town of Sarasota's size. It has its own opera in a restored 1920s theatre, a ballet company known for Frederick Ashton's work, a full orchestra and the Asolo Repertory Theatre on the Ringling grounds.

Miami answers with the Arsht Center, Miami City Ballet and the New World Symphony in its Frank Gehry hall. It also has something Sarasota lacks, the salsa, son and Afro-Cuban bands of Little Havana. Both seasons run mainly through the winter.

Neither city has much of a bathing culture. Each has one notable exception: Miami Beach's long-established Russian and Turkish bath house, with its banya and cold plunges, and Sarasota's Warm Mineral Springs, a natural spring-fed pool about forty minutes south.

The bigger difference is pace. Miami's calm has to be found at resort spas or on Key Biscayne, away from the noise, while slow days are Sarasota's normal rhythm outside the busy winter weeks.