Myrtle Beach or Charleston?

Myrtle Beach is built on its beach. The Grand Strand runs for about 100km of wide, pale sand that shelves gently into small waves, and most hotels open straight onto it. If you want busy oceanfront blocks with piers and a boardwalk, they are there. If you want dunes and calm, Surfside, Garden City and the state parks to the south have them.

Charleston's sand is good but further away. Folly Beach, Sullivan's Island and Isle of Palms are each about half an hour from the old town by car. Tides make the water churn more, and some days bring rip currents. In return you get variety: surf culture at Folly, Civil War-era forts behind the dunes on Sullivan's, and long empty stretches at Kiawah.

This is one of the widest gaps between the two. Charleston treats Lowcountry cooking as a serious cuisine, rooted in Gullah Geechee and West African traditions. You can eat she-crab soup in a restored townhouse, whole-hog barbecue, oyster roasts in winter and biscuit breakfasts, mostly along upper King Street and in the French Quarter. The catch is that good tables book up well ahead and cheap international food is scarce.

Myrtle Beach feeds crowds: seafood buffets, pancake houses and chains along the strip. Its better meals are a drive away, at the waterfront seafood places of Murrells Inlet or the lightly battered Calabash fry across the state line. Two evenings will cover them.

Charleston's historic core is the reason most people come. You can walk south of Broad Street past Rainbow Row and the Battery, tour the Nathaniel Russell and Aiken-Rhett houses, and take the boat to Fort Sumter, where the Civil War began. The Old Slave Mart Museum and the International African American Museum face the city's past directly.

Myrtle Beach is a twentieth-century resort with little of that depth. Brookgreen Gardens, a sculpture garden on a former rice plantation, and the Moorish-style Atalaya next door make a worthwhile day. After that, the strongest cultural outing is the drive to Charleston itself.

Neither city is worth the trip for its nights out alone, but they offer different evenings. Charleston means drinks: rooftop terraces, cocktail rooms and oyster bars on upper King Street, which students and weekend groups fill. Quieter wine bars and old taverns in the French Quarter suit a slower night, and most places close around 2am.

Myrtle Beach is better if you want to dance, at least in summer. The entertainment complexes have dance clubs that run late, the boardwalk bars are loud and casual, and North Myrtle Beach keeps the shag alive in its old Main Street clubs. In the off-season much of it shuts early, and rally and spring-break weeks get rowdy.

The two share the same flat coastal plain, but Charleston gives you more to do in it. Kayaking through the spartina marsh creeks, often with dolphins nearby, is the standout. Francis Marion National Forest and the ACE Basin add quiet trails and alligators, and Kiawah and Edisto are good for cycling.

Myrtle Beach's best natural spot is Huntington Beach State Park, which has marsh boardwalks and some of the coast's better birdwatching. Inland, the cypress swamps of the Waccamaw River are good for paddling. The Grand Strand's real outdoor draw is golf, with dozens of courses. In both places, summer heat pushes activity into the early morning.

Charleston has more within easy reach. Middleton Place, Magnolia and Drayton Hall line the Ashley River about half an hour out, pairing formal gardens with the history of the enslaved people who worked them, and Boone Hall sits across the harbour in Mount Pleasant. McLeod Plantation on James Island tells that history most directly. Further afield, Savannah's squares fill a full day two hours south, and Beaufort is the place to learn about Gullah culture on the sea islands.

From Myrtle Beach, the best outing is the two-hour drive down to Charleston. Closer by, Georgetown's old rice port is under an hour away, and Wilmington and Southport lie up the coast. Both cities need a car for every one of these trips.

Myrtle Beach has catered to American family vacations for generations, and it shows. Resort pools with lazy rivers, water parks, a seaside amusement park with a wooden coaster, the observation wheel on the boardwalk and volcano-themed mini-golf mean children rarely run short of things to do. Just avoid spring-break weeks and the rowdier oceanfront blocks at night.

Charleston is calm and pleasant with children, but it has less for them. The aquarium and Children's Museum on the waterfront, climbing through the aircraft carrier at Patriots Point and the boat to Fort Sumter fill a couple of days. House tours tend to lose small children, and every beach day means a drive.

Charleston is clearly easier. Its old peninsula is flat and compact, most sights lie within about 3km of each other, and a free shuttle and pedicabs cover the gaps. You only need a car for the beaches and plantations.

Myrtle Beach is spread along a 100km strip of multi-lane highway with few pavements, and buses hardly serve visitors. Outside the boardwalk area and the beach itself, you drive everywhere, often in slow summer traffic on Kings Highway.

Charleston makes browsing a pleasure. King Street moves from antiques and galleries at its lower end, through national brands, to independent boutiques and design shops further up. At City Market, Gullah artisans weave sweetgrass baskets as you watch.

Myrtle Beach shopping means bargains rather than character. Two big outlet centres, the Market Common on the old air base and huge highway beach shops selling inflatables and swimwear cover most of it. Neither city has a luxury tier.

Myrtle Beach costs much less. The huge supply of motels, hotels and condos keeps rooms cheap outside the summer peak, and kitchens in many units cut the food bill. Prices jump sharply in July and on long weekends, so timing matters.

Charleston charges big-city rates for peninsula inns and well-known restaurants, especially on spring and autumn weekends, and paid house and plantation tours add up. Walking the old streets and the Battery costs nothing, and staying in Mount Pleasant is cheaper if you are happy to drive in.

Charleston has a real arts calendar, built around Spoleto Festival USA. Every late spring, it fills the city with opera, chamber music, dance and jazz for over two weeks. The rest of the year brings plays at the historic Dock Street Theatre, the symphony at the Gaillard Center and Gullah storytelling and song.

Myrtle Beach's evenings out are polished variety entertainment instead. Its large theatres stage country and gospel revues, Christmas shows and dinner shows with knights or pirates, and touring country acts play there too. It makes a fun family night, but you will not find serious drama or classical music.

Neither city has a bathing tradition, and both rely on hotel and resort spas. Charleston relaxes you more by its pace: shaded walled gardens, quiet church courtyards and evenings at White Point Garden. Kiawah's resorts add proper spa time.

In Myrtle Beach, the summer strip is too loud and car-bound to be restful. Calm there means heading south to Pawleys Island or coming in spring or autumn.