Nashville or Orange Beach?

This is where the two part company most sharply. Nashville has no coast at all, only reservoir swimming areas at Percy Priest and Old Hickory lakes, where locals spend hot weekends on pontoon boats rather than on sand.

Orange Beach is built around a long white quartz strand on the Gulf, with green, clear water and gently shelving sand from late spring into autumn. Keep an eye on the rip current flags and the hurricane season, but for swimming and sunbathing there is no contest.

Nashville offers more to eat and more variety. Hot chicken, meat-and-three cafeterias, barbecue and biscuits form a strong Southern core, and East Nashville, Germantown and Nolensville Pike stretch it further with chef-led kitchens and Kurdish, Mexican and Vietnamese cooking.

Orange Beach does one thing well: Gulf seafood eaten by the water, from Royal Red shrimp to chargrilled oysters and West Indies salad. Beyond a few good fish dinners the choice soon repeats itself.

Nashville has a real list of sights, nearly all of them about music. It has the Country Music Hall of Fame, 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, and the Hermitage and Belle Meade cover art and the region's harder history.

Orange Beach has a small local museum and little else. Its history lies in the forts and old towns elsewhere on the coast, which you will need a day out to see.

Nashville goes out far more, and more often. Lower Broadway's multi-storey honky-tonks run as one long party at weekends, while East Nashville's dive bars and cocktail lounges and Midtown's student crowd offer something calmer. In both cities, though, the night is about drinks and live bands, not dance clubs.

Orange Beach's evenings depend on the season. The famous roadhouse on the state line and the bars around the marina and Perdido Pass get lively in spring and summer, but out of season most nights end after dinner.

Orange Beach has the better outdoors, and most of it is on the water. You can paddle the bays behind the barrier island, take dolphin cruises out of Perdido Pass, go charter fishing and diving on the artificial reefs, and cycle the backcountry trail past alligator ponds into Gulf State Park. Bon Secour adds birding during the migrations.

Nashville's green country is gentler and hillier. Radnor Lake and the Warner Parks offer forest walks, the Harpeth suits an easy canoe trip, and the Natchez Trace Parkway is good for cycling. It is pleasant, but it rarely becomes the main reason for a trip.

The two are about level here, and both need a car. Nashville's outings are small towns and inland history: Franklin's Main Street and battlefields, Leiper's Fork, Stones River, the whiskey distilleries around Lynchburg, and Chattanooga at the far edge of a day.

From Orange Beach the outings follow the coast. Pensacola has its colonial quarter, naval aviation museum and brick forts, Mobile has antebellum streets and Mardi Gras history, and the Dauphin Island ferry leaves from Fort Morgan.

Orange Beach makes life with children simpler. Condos with kitchens and pools, shallow water, sandcastles, a Ferris wheel and mini golf fill the days, and a water park and small zoo are close by. The catches are the midsummer sun and the rip currents.

Nashville works with more planning. The zoo at Grassmere, the Adventure Science Center and the Lane Motor Museum are good days out, but Lower Broadway is an adult drinking strip and much of the time goes on driving between places.

Neither is easy without a car, but Nashville at least has a walkable heart. Broadway, the Ryman, the Hall of Fame, the Gulch and the pedestrian bridge are all a short stroll apart, even if the Opry, the Hermitage and the outer neighbourhoods each need a drive or ride-hailing.

Orange Beach is one long highway of condo towers with almost no useful public transport. You walk to the beach and drive everywhere else, often slowly in summer traffic, although bikes work well on the paved trails.

Nashville gives you more reasons to browse. It has Western boots and rhinestone shirts on Broadway, excellent guitar shops and letterpress concert posters, plus independent boutiques and record shops in 12 South and East Nashville.

Orange Beach sells beachwear, souvenirs and fishing gear along the main road. For brands, visitors drive to the outlet mall in Foley.

Neither is cheap, but Orange Beach is easier on the budget. A family or group sharing a condo with a kitchen spreads the cost, the beach is free, and from late autumn to early spring rates drop sharply.

Nashville's downtown hotels are pricey, especially at weekends when groups fill the city, and ride-hailing adds up. The main saving is the music: the Broadway honky-tonks have no cover charge, and staying midweek or eating at hot chicken counters helps.

This is Nashville's strongest card. The Grand Ole Opry and the Ryman's famous acoustics anchor the scene, and beneath them are songwriter nights, a bluegrass room near the Gulch and Americana stages in East Nashville. The Schermerhorn and the Tennessee Performing Arts Center add symphony, ballet and opera.

Orange Beach has a marina amphitheatre for touring summer acts and cover bands in the beach bars. Its one distinctive event is the November songwriters' festival around the state line.

Neither city has a spa culture worth travelling for. Both offer massages in hotel or resort spas and little else. In Nashville you have to go looking for calm. The porch-front streets and parks of Belmont and Hillsboro are pleasant enough, but they are a drive from the music that brought you there, so a quiet stay means keeping your distance from the reason for the trip.

Orange Beach does better because doing very little is the whole point of the place. Outside summer weekends and spring break, a day can be a walk on the sand, a book on the balcony and the light fading over the back bays, with nothing booked and nowhere to be. Come between October and April for the stillest weeks. In high summer it gets as loud as any resort.