Myrtle Beach or Nashville?

There is no contest here. Myrtle Beach sits on about 100km of wide, pale sand with shallow, gently shelving water that warms through the summer. If you want more space, the dune-backed stretches at Surfside, Garden City and the state parks are much quieter.

Nashville is far inland. Percy Priest and Old Hickory lakes have small swimming areas and warm water in summer, but locals spend the day on a pontoon boat rather than on a towel on the sand. It makes an afternoon out, not a reason to come.

Nashville eats better. Hot chicken is a dish worth travelling for, and the meat-and-three cafeterias and barbecue cover the Southern basics. East Nashville, Germantown and the Gulch add chef-led cooking, and Nolensville Pike has Kurdish, Mexican and Vietnamese places.

Myrtle Beach's strip runs to seafood buffets, pancake houses and chains. The best meals are the local shrimp, oysters and flounder on the Murrells Inlet waterfront and the Calabash-style fried fish over the state line. They are enjoyable, but you will have tried them all in a couple of evenings.

Nashville has far more to see by day. Music runs through it, from the Country Music Hall of Fame to the National Museum of African American Music and a daytime tour of the Ryman. The Parthenon replica, the Frist in its Art Deco post office, the Hermitage and Belle Meade add art and the harder history of the region.

Myrtle Beach is a twentieth-century resort with little of its past on show. Brookgreen Gardens is worth a morning for its sculpture among the live oaks and its record of the people enslaved on the plantation. Add the Moorish-style Atalaya next door and you have seen most of it.

Nashville offers the bigger night out. On Lower Broadway the multi-storey honky-tonks have a band on every floor and run as one long party at weekends. The dive bars and cocktail lounges of East Nashville are a calmer alternative.

Myrtle Beach's evenings are seasonal and resort-style: beach bars, rooftop decks and a cluster of dance clubs at the entertainment complexes, a kind of late night that Nashville largely lacks. The shag clubs of North Myrtle Beach are its most local touch, but outside summer much of the town goes quiet early.

Both offer gentle, low-lying countryside rather than drama, but of different kinds. Myrtle Beach is coastal: dunes, maritime forest and salt marsh with herons and alligators at Huntington Beach State Park. There is kayaking in the cypress swamps, dolphin cruises and dozens of golf courses.

Nashville has wooded hills and limestone creeks instead. There are trails at Radnor Lake and the Warner Parks, canoeing on the Harpeth and cycling on the Natchez Trace Parkway. Walkers will find more around Nashville, while birdwatchers and paddlers do better on the coast.

Both need a car, and both have a solid spread of history within about two hours. From Myrtle Beach the prize is Charleston, a long but rewarding day, with Georgetown's old port and the quiet village of Pawleys Island closer to hand.

Nashville's outings are shorter and more varied. Franklin's Main Street and Civil War battlefields are half an hour away, the Tennessee whiskey distilleries around Lynchburg are further out, and Chattanooga sits at the far edge of a day.

Myrtle Beach is built around children in a way Nashville is not, from the old wooden roller coaster at the seaside amusement park to resort suites with kitchens that make mealtimes easy. The catch is midsummer, when the heat, slow traffic on the main roads and driving between every attraction can wear young travellers down. Beach mornings and quieter afternoons work best.

Nashville rewards a few days of planning around its attractions. Most children are impressed by the full-scale Parthenon in Centennial Park, and the Country Music Hall of Fame runs family activities. In summer, the splash pads in the big parks and the water park by Percy Priest Lake take the edge off the heat.

Nashville is a little easier. Its compact downtown puts Broadway, the Ryman, the Hall of Fame, the riverfront and the Gulch within a short walk of each other. The Opry, the Hermitage and outer neighbourhoods such as 12 South all mean a drive or a ride-hail.

Myrtle Beach depends on the car along almost its whole length, with attractions strung out along multi-lane highways that have few pavements. Walking works only within a resort area or along the sand itself.

Neither city is a shopping destination, but each sells something different. Myrtle Beach means outlet centres, huge beachwear stores and the Market Common, and its one local craft is the sweetgrass baskets sold on the coast road south.

Nashville deals in boots, hats, guitars and letterpress concert posters. The independent boutiques and record shops of 12 South and East Nashville make for a more personal browse.

Myrtle Beach goes further on a budget. Its huge number of motels and condos keeps rooms cheap outside the summer peak, and a kitchen cuts what you spend on food. A car is unavoidable, though, and July is expensive.

Nashville's downtown hotels are expensive, especially at weekends when groups fill them, and ride-hailing costs add up. The music on Broadway is free, and staying midweek and away from downtown also helps.

This is Nashville's strongest card. There are the Opry and the Ryman's pews and acoustics, songwriter nights where writers play their own hits, and rooms for bluegrass and Americana. The symphony plays at the Schermerhorn, and the Tennessee Performing Arts Center has ballet and opera, so there is something on most nights.

Myrtle Beach offers polished variety theatres with country, gospel and Christmas revues, knight and pirate dinner shows, and cover bands in the beach bars. That makes a good family evening, but there is nothing in the way of serious drama or classical music.

Neither city has a bathing tradition, and neither is a place to properly unwind. Myrtle Beach has a slight edge thanks to its resort spas and the slower pace around Pawleys Island. In spring and autumn a long beach walk there is genuinely restful.

Nashville's spas are in hotels and the wealthier neighbourhoods, and its downtown runs on noise. Leafy Belmont and Hillsboro are quiet, but rest is not why people come.