New York or Virginia Beach?

New York's beaches are a day off from the city rather than the main event. Coney Island and the Rockaways sit at the end of the subway lines, get packed on summer weekends and have cooler water.

Virginia Beach is built around its sand. The Oceanfront has a wide beach with lifeguards and a three-mile boardwalk, the Chesapeake Bay side has gentle water for small children, and Sandbridge adds dunes and rental houses. The swimming season is still short, though, ending by late October.

New York cooks almost every cuisine on earth, each in its own neighbourhood, from the Chinese kitchens of Flushing to Italian on Arthur Avenue. On top of that come pizza slices, delis, halal carts and one of the deepest fine-dining scenes anywhere. You could eat somewhere different at every meal for weeks.

Virginia Beach does one thing well: Lynnhaven oysters and Chesapeake blue crab, best at the dockside places around the inlet rather than on the resort strip, which leans on chains and buffets. For more variety, people drive to Norfolk.

Here the gap is wide. New York has the Met, MoMA, the Natural History museum and the Cloisters, plus landmarks from the Statue of Liberty to Grand Central, and its brownstones and cast-iron streets tell a story of their own.

Virginia Beach's sights centre on 1607: Cape Henry, where English colonists first landed, the old lighthouse beside it and the Thoroughgood House. They fill a morning, and King Neptune on the boardwalk is the photo stop.

New York goes out all night, every night. It has cocktail and dive bars in the East Village, wine bars in the West Village, skyline rooftops in Midtown, and warehouse clubs in Bushwick and Williamsburg that keep going past dawn at weekends.

In Virginia Beach, going out is mostly a summer thing on Atlantic Avenue: beach bars, rooftop decks and sports bars, loud and casual, with sailors in the crowd. Town Center is more grown-up, the strip goes quiet early out of season, and there are hardly any clubs.

There is about as much outdoors in each, but of very different kinds. New York's is mostly designed: Central Park, the High Line, the birds of Jamaica Bay. For proper hill walking, take the train up to Breakneck Ridge in the Hudson Highlands, which is at its best in October colour.

Virginia Beach is flat and watery, with cypress swamp and dunes at First Landing and the empty marshes of Back Bay and False Cape. Surfing and kayak trips out to the dolphins replace any climbing.

Both are good bases for a day out, but the trips work differently. From New York the train does the work: Philadelphia's Independence Hall in about an hour and a half, Princeton and Yale's New Haven, or the Hudson Valley's estates, Dia Beacon and Storm King.

Virginia Beach has one outstanding history day, the Historic Triangle of Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown, plus the Wright brothers' Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks. Almost all of it needs a car.

Both work for children, in opposite ways. New York has the bigger attractions, with the dinosaur halls, the Bronx Zoo, the carrier museum and the free Staten Island Ferry. But stairs-only subway stations, small hotel rooms and Midtown crowds wear out little ones.

Virginia Beach is easier from one day to the next: calm bay beaches for toddlers, the aquarium's sea turtles and otters, mini-golf, and rental houses built for families, with an amusement park near Williamsburg. The catch is the summer heat and driving everywhere.

New York never needs a car. Manhattan's grid is easy to walk, the subway runs all night, and ferries and bike docks fill the gaps. The irritations are the station stairs, weekend engineering work and the trip to the airport.

Virginia Beach is the reverse. The boardwalk and summer trolley cover the Oceanfront, but Sandbridge, First Landing and Town Center all mean driving through suburban sprawl, and the buses are slow and infrequent.

New York is worth a trip for shopping alone, from Fifth and Madison Avenues and department stores such as Bergdorf Goodman and Macy's to SoHo's brands and Brooklyn's vintage and record shops. Virginia Beach has a regional mall, chain stores at Town Center and plenty of souvenir shops, and its surf shops, with deep local roots, are the one thing worth seeking out.

New York is one of the most expensive cities in the world to visit, with small, costly hotel rooms, tax and tips on every meal, and steep tickets for theatre and observation decks. Pizza slices, Queens restaurants, the ferry and the parks soften the bill, as does sleeping in Brooklyn.

Virginia Beach is clearly cheaper, though not cheap in high summer. Out of season, oceanfront rooms drop sharply, and the beach and state parks are free, so the car is the main extra cost.

New York has Broadway, the Metropolitan Opera, the Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall, along with jazz in Village basements and Harlem, gospel on Sundays and free Shakespeare in the parks in summer.

Virginia Beach offers touring rock and country acts at its amphitheatre and free concerts on the boardwalk. For opera, the symphony or the spring Virginia Arts Festival, you have to go to Norfolk.

Neither is a place to switch off, but New York has more to offer. There are the East Village's Russian and Turkish baths, going since the late 1800s, the banyas of Brighton Beach and the big Korean spas in Queens, with quiet to be found in the Cloisters' gardens or the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Virginia Beach has hotel spas and little more. Here the calm comes from early walks on the boardwalk and the quieter spring and autumn months, not from any facilities.