Orange Beach or Tampa?

Orange Beach faces the open Gulf, so the beach is the whole stay. One unbroken strip of white quartz sand runs past the condo towers to Alabama Point, the water is a few steps from the door, and the state park beaches give you quieter stretches. Its weak season is winter, when the sea gets cool enough that swimming gives way to walks.

Tampa's own shore is mostly seawall and small bay beaches. The fine sand is across the bridges at Clearwater, Pass-a-Grille and Fort De Soto, up to an hour's drive away. Those beaches are just as soft and calm, but every beach day becomes an outing.

Orange Beach keeps to one thing: Gulf seafood eaten casually. Royal Reds, oysters and West Indies salad at the waterside fish houses on the back bays make for some good dinners. Along the main road, though, most places serve the same fried platters, so the usual approach is to pick out a few seafood meals rather than eat your way around town.

Tampa is plainly the better place to eat. Its local cuisine has a history behind it, from the Cuban, Spanish and Sicilian workers of the Ybor cigar factories: the pressed Cuban sandwich with salami, deviled crab croquettes and café con leche, plus grouper sandwiches and stone crab by the bay. Food halls and restaurants in South Tampa and Seminole Heights give you choice from one meal to the next, which Orange Beach can't match.

There is barely a contest here. Orange Beach has one small museum of Native American and fishing history, and the forts and old streets of the coast are in Pensacola and Mobile.

Tampa fills two or three good days. There are the brick factories, iron balconies and Latin social clubs of Ybor City, Henry Plant's railway hotel with its silver minarets and museum, and the art and history museums along the river. Nothing here is world-famous, but next to Orange Beach it is a full itinerary.

A night out in Orange Beach is casual and beachy. The Flora-Bama roadhouse sits on the state line and a few decks are spread around the marina and Perdido Pass. It is loud in spring break and summer, quiet for the rest of the year, and you need a car or taxi between stops.

Tampa has more range, and it keeps going all year. Seventh Avenue in Ybor has the dance clubs Orange Beach lacks, SoHo has cocktail bars and patios, downtown has rooftops and craft beer taprooms, and every winter Gasparilla turns the bayfront into a huge street party.

Both are flat, watery country, where the outdoors means paddling and wildlife rather than views. Orange Beach keeps it all close to your stay: a paved backcountry trail past pine woods and alligator ponds, kayaking on the back bays, charter fishing and offshore reefs for anglers and divers, and Bon Secour for migrating birds.

Tampa's highlights are further apart but more varied. You can paddle the cypress swamp at Hillsborough River and the mangrove tunnels in the bay, see manatees near Apollo Beach in winter, and swim the clear spring-fed rivers about an hour to the north.

Both lists need a car, and neither has anything worth the journey on its own. Orange Beach's outings lean towards history: Pensacola's colonial quarter and brick forts, Mobile's antebellum streets and battleship, and Fort Morgan with the ferry to Dauphin Island.

Tampa's outings are more about art and small towns. There is the Dalí Museum in St Petersburg, the Ringling estate in Sarasota, the Greek sponge docks of Tarpon Springs and the Frank Lloyd Wright campus at Lakeland, and the Orlando parks are close enough for a long day.

Orange Beach keeps a family vacation simple. You get a condo with a kitchen and pool, shallow water a few steps from the door, dolphin boats and the Ferris wheel at the marina, and a water park and small zoo within half an hour. The main worry is in the sea, where rip currents mean an adult in the water with young swimmers.

Tampa trades the beach outside the door for bigger attractions: the roller coasters and animal park of Busch Gardens, the manatees at ZooTampa and the Florida Aquarium, with calm Gulf beaches a drive away. Here the summer heat and afternoon thunderstorms are the problem, so plan the outings for mornings or go in spring or autumn.

Neither works without wheels, but Tampa is a little easier. Its heritage streetcar links downtown, the Channel District and Ybor City, and the Riverwalk means a short stay in the centre can be done on foot. Orange Beach is one long highway of condos and restaurants with almost no useful public transport, summer traffic crawls, and a bike on the trails is the only real alternative to the car.

Orange Beach sells beachwear, souvenirs and fishing gear along its main road, and anyone who wants to shop seriously drives inland to the outlet mall at Foley.

Tampa gives you more to browse. There is an upscale mall with luxury and department-store brands, the open-air boutiques of Hyde Park Village, and one real local craft in the cigars still rolled by hand in Ybor City.

The two are cheap at opposite times of year. Orange Beach rates drop sharply from late autumn to early spring, when the town is good value for a quiet stay, and groups who share a condo and cook some meals save the most. Tampa's hotels are dearer in winter and spring and cheaper in summer.

Day to day, Tampa's Cuban bakeries and sandwich counters keep lunches cheap, but theme park tickets add a lot for families. In both places a hire car is a real part of the budget, while the beach at Orange Beach costs nothing.

In Orange Beach, live music means touring country and rock shows at the outdoor amphitheatre at the marina, cover bands in the beach bars, and the songwriters' festival that fills the state-line stages each November. There is no theatre or classical music.

Tampa has the stages Orange Beach lacks. The Straz Center hosts touring Broadway shows, opera, ballet and the Florida Orchestra, the 1926 Tampa Theatre holds films and concerts under its twinkling ceiling, and smaller rock and indie venues cluster in Ybor City.

Neither has a bathing tradition, and both rely on a few resort spas. The difference is where you find the calm. In Orange Beach it is the town itself, outside summer and spring break, with empty mornings and sunsets over the back bays. In Tampa it means leaving the city for the barrier islands across the bay.