Orlando or St. Pete Beach?

Orlando is inland. Cocoa Beach and New Smyrna Beach on the Atlantic are about an hour's drive away, and the Gulf is nearer two hours. Most of the swimming in a week here happens in hotel pools and the water parks.

St. Pete Beach sits on exactly that calmer Gulf coast, with one long strip of soft, pale sand and shallow water that rarely has any surf. You can choose between the wide, sunset-facing sand at Pass-a-Grille and the quieter Upham Beach, or take a boat to empty Shell Key. The occasional bout of red tide is the main thing that can spoil it.

Orlando eats better, but you have to drive to find it. Away from the park counters and chains, Mills 50 has a strong run of Vietnamese kitchens, Winter Park and Audubon Park have chef-led rooms and farmers' markets, and Epcot's World Showcase is a decent place to graze from country to country.

St. Pete Beach keeps things simple: grouper sandwiches, fried shrimp, smoked fish spread and stone crab claws at shacks and waterfront grills, usually with a sunset dinner on a deck. It does that well, but the range is thin, and more ambitious cooking means a trip across to St. Petersburg.

Neither place is a culture destination, but what little each has is different in kind. Orlando has one real treasure, the Morse Museum's Tiffany collection in Winter Park with its 1893 chapel interior, plus the modest museums of Loch Haven Park.

St. Pete Beach has seaside history rather than collections: the pink Don CeSar hotel, Pass-a-Grille's old cottages and the Spanish-American War batteries at Fort De Soto. The Dalí Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts are only half an hour away in St. Petersburg.

Orlando gives you more of a night out. CityWalk and Disney Springs have easy themed bars, and downtown along Orange Avenue a university crowd keeps the bars and clubs going late at weekends. Ivanhoe Village has a relaxed gay scene.

At St. Pete Beach the evening is sunset at a tiki deck with a cover band, and most people are in bed not long after dark. There are no clubs, so anyone after a later night goes to downtown St. Petersburg.

Both landscapes are flat and made of water, but at St. Pete Beach the outdoors starts at the hotel door. You can kayak through mangroves at Fort De Soto, watch dolphins from a boat, fish from the piers and spot spoonbills on the seagrass flats.

Orlando's best nature means driving out to it. There is kayaking in the clear water of Wekiwa Springs, winter manatees at Blue Spring, airboats past alligators in the Kissimmee headwaters, and on the coast the birding lagoons of Merritt Island.

Both are good bases for day trips, and they head in different directions. Orlando has the Kennedy Space Center an hour east and Spanish St Augustine to the north, both out of reach from the Gulf coast in a comfortable day. Most of its other outings take close to two hours.

From St. Pete Beach the trips are shorter. The Dalí Museum is half an hour away, Ybor City is under an hour, and Greek Tarpon Springs, the Ringling estate in Sarasota and Anna Maria Island are all easy. Orlando's parks are the long one, about two hours each way.

Orlando is built around children like nowhere else. Disney's parks and water parks, Universal for teenagers, SeaWorld and Legoland come with resort buses and boats that mean families never have to leave the bubble. The cost is the heat, the queues and the sheer scale.

St. Pete Beach is easier and smaller. Shallow, calm water and soft sand suit toddlers, and dolphin boats, shelling and the Fort De Soto pier fill the rest of the day. Aquariums and Busch Gardens are about an hour away.

Both need a car, but Orlando needs one more. Parks, hotel zones and downtown are miles apart along Interstate 4, pavements are not made for walking between them, and traffic near the parks is heavy. The exception is staying on-site, where Disney's monorail, boats and gondolas or Universal's water taxis do the work.

St. Pete Beach is a single strip with a beach trolley. Pass-a-Grille and Corey Avenue are easy to walk or cycle, and you only need to drive for Fort De Soto and the day trips.

Orlando is a genuine shopping destination for American and designer brands. Two large premium outlet centres, the luxury Mall at Millenia and the brand stores of Disney Springs draw many international visitors, and Park Avenue in Winter Park adds tree-lined boutiques. St. Pete Beach sells swimwear, beach gear and souvenirs along Gulf Boulevard, with a few galleries on Corey Avenue and in Pass-a-Grille. Anything bigger means a drive to Tampa.

Both are costly, in different ways. In Orlando the rooms along International Drive and in Kissimmee are fairly priced and self-catering villas are common, but park tickets, express passes, parking and in-park meals push the total up.

At St. Pete Beach the cost is the room: beachfront resorts are dear, above all from February to April. The beach itself is free apart from parking, and motels a block back plus the late-summer lull make a cheaper stay possible.

Orlando has a proper stage. The Dr. Phillips Center brings in touring Broadway shows and the Orlando Philharmonic, and Orlando Shakespeare Theater plays in Loch Haven Park. The long-running Fringe fills the spring, and the polished shows and fireworks inside the parks come on top.

In St. Pete Beach, live performance means a cover band or an acoustic set at a beach bar. For the Florida Orchestra or opera, you drive to St. Petersburg or Tampa.

St. Pete Beach is the place to slow down. The day runs from a morning walk on the sand to a sunset that people stop to watch, and Pass-a-Grille is especially unhurried outside the spring-break weeks. Orlando has the bigger resort spas, lazy rivers and landscaped pools around Lake Buena Vista, but you use them to recover between park days rather than to rest. Winter Park's lakes are its calmest corner.