Nashville or Sarasota?

The gap is about as wide as it gets. Nashville is hundreds of kilometres from the sea, so swimming means the small roped-off areas on Percy Priest Lake or Old Hickory Lake. Locals spend summer weekends on pontoon boats there, and for a visitor it is a pleasant afternoon at best.

Sarasota is built around its beaches. Siesta Key's quartz sand stays cool underfoot, the Gulf is shallow and gentle, and Lido Key, Longboat Key and Anna Maria Island give a choice between beaches close to town and quieter ones. Check for red tide before you go, and expect a cool sea in midwinter.

Nashville has a cuisine of its own, which Sarasota does not. Hot chicken, meat-and-three cafeterias, barbecue and biscuits are dishes worth planning a day around, and East Nashville, Germantown and the Gulch, along with the immigrant kitchens of Nolensville Pike, add range beyond the Southern basics.

Sarasota eats well without being memorable. Grouper sandwiches, stone crab and waterfront fish shacks are the high points, along with the dining rooms of Main Street and St Armands Circle. The Amish cooking and pie in Pinecraft is the one local surprise.

The two are roughly level, but they offer very different things. Nashville's sights are mostly about music: the Country Music Hall of Fame, the National Museum of African American Music and a daytime tour of the Ryman. Away from music there is the Parthenon replica, the Frist in its Art Deco post office, and the plantation history of the Hermitage and Belle Meade.

Sarasota's culture centres on a single site. The Ringling, with its Rubens canvases, the Ca' d'Zan mansion and the circus museum, fills a full day. After that, the interest is in mid-century Sarasota School houses and the 1920s buildings of Burns Court.

Nashville is the far stronger city for going out. Lower Broadway's multi-storey honky-tonks run live bands until the small hours, and on weekends hen and stag groups fill the strip. East Nashville's dive bars and Midtown's student crowd offer something calmer, though dance clubs are scarce.

Sarasota's evenings are gentle and end early. People have a sunset drink at the open-air bars of Siesta Key Village, or go to a wine bar on Main Street, and the crowd is older. Anyone wanting a big night drives to Tampa or St Petersburg.

Sarasota has the edge, mainly because of its wildlife. Alligators sun themselves in Myakka River State Park, there is kayaking through the mangrove tunnels off Lido Key, dolphins and manatees swim in the bay, and herons and ospreys are everywhere. The land is completely flat, though, and summer storms push activity into the early morning.

Nashville offers rolling, wooded country rather than wildlife. There are easy trails at Radnor Lake and in the Warner Parks, gentle canoe trips on the Harpeth, and cycling or scenic driving on the Natchez Trace Parkway. Its best seasons are spring flowers and autumn colour.

Both have a decent list of day trips, but of different kinds. From Nashville you go into Southern small towns and history: Franklin's Main Street and Civil War battlefields, the village of Leiper's Fork, and whiskey distilleries around Lynchburg. Chattanooga is at the outer limit for a day.

Sarasota's best outings go up the Gulf coast instead. St Petersburg's Dalí Museum and Tampa's Ybor City are about an hour away, and Tarpon Springs, the Edison and Ford winter estates in Fort Myers and Anna Maria Island make easy smaller trips.

Sarasota is the easier choice with children. The sea off Siesta Key and Lido Key is shallow and calm, Mote Marine Laboratory's aquarium has sharks and manatees, and the town is relaxed, with plenty of rentals that have pools. The main drawbacks are the lack of a nearby theme park and the summer midday heat.

Nashville can work well with planning: the zoo at Grassmere, the Adventure Science Center and the Lane Motor Museum are all good. But the centre of the city is the adult drinking strip, and moving between attractions means long stretches in the car.

Both are car cities with poor buses, so most visitors rent a car or rely on ride-hailing in either place. Nashville's advantage is a compact downtown where Broadway, the Ryman, the Hall of Fame and the Gulch are all within walking distance, though the Opry and the Hermitage are a drive away.

Sarasota has no single walkable centre to match. Instead it has several small ones, including Main Street, St Armands Circle and Siesta Key Village, linked by bridges that clog up in winter. A free trolley on Siesta Key and the cycle routes on the keys help a little.

Neither is a shopping destination, but each has its own speciality. In Nashville, people shop for cowboy boots, rhinestone shirts, guitars and letterpress posters from Hatch Show Print, and the boutiques and record shops of 12 South and East Nashville make for a good browse.

Sarasota's shopping is about the resort: jewellery, galleries and beachwear around St Armands Circle, and independent shops on Main Street and Palm Avenue. Both cities leave chain stores to the malls.

Both are expensive, and the costs fall in different places. In Nashville, downtown hotels are priciest at weekends when groups arrive, but the music on Broadway costs nothing, and staying midweek or eating at hot chicken counters helps.

In Sarasota, rooms on the keys cost most from January to April. Free public beaches and cheap state parks keep the days inexpensive, and a summer stay or a base on the mainland brings the bill down.

Nashville is one of the great music cities. It has the Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman's famous acoustics, songwriter nights in small rooms, bluegrass and Americana, and bands in the bars from late morning. The symphony at the Schermerhorn and the ballet and opera at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center add a classical side.

Sarasota is impressive for its size, but its strength is the stage rather than the bar. It has the opera in a restored 1920s theatre, a ballet company known for Ashton, and the Asolo Repertory Theatre. Most of the programme runs from autumn to spring.

Nashville makes rest something you have to arrange. A hotel spa, or a room in the leafy residential streets away from downtown, gives you quiet mornings and a porch to sit on. But the city's pull is towards music and late nights, and nothing about it is restful in itself.

Sarasota wins because the setting does the work for you. The days settle into the rhythm of the beach without any planning. A walk along the waterline, a slow swim in shallow water and the sun going down over the Gulf fill the day, so the spas on the keys are a bonus rather than the reason to go. The town is calmest outside the winter peak, when the keys are less crowded and the bridges move freely.