Palm Beach or St. Augustine?

Palm Beach has the better sea. The Gulf Stream keeps the water clear, blue-green and warm enough to swim in every month, and Peanut Island adds calm, shallow snorkelling. The weakness is the shore itself: seawalls and private estates leave the Municipal Beach and Phipps Ocean Park as the main public sand in town, so wider beaches mean driving to Singer Island or Delray.

St. Augustine has the more generous sand, wide and pale along Anastasia Island, with dunes in the state park and easy surf. The water there is greener and more churned, though, and in winter it is too cold for most people to swim.

Neither is a place people travel to for the food. Palm Beach gives you more range: formal French and Italian dining and stone crab in season on the island, and Cuban bakeries, Caribbean takeaways and a waterfront green market across the bridge.

St. Augustine has the stronger local identity, with the Minorcan datil pepper in its clam chowder and pilau and shrimp eaten in casual places on the marsh creeks. Beyond a few chef-driven rooms, though, the choice is thin, and St. George Street caters mainly to passing tourists.

St. Augustine has far more to see. Its Spanish founding in 1565 left the coquina Castillo de San Marcos, the old city gate and lanes of balconied houses, and on top of that sits a Gilded Age layer in Flagler College and the Lightner Museum.

Palm Beach has only the second layer: Flagler's Whitehall mansion, Mizner's Mediterranean Revival courtyards and the estates along South Ocean Boulevard, plus the Norton Museum's art across the lagoon. Flagler built in both towns, so they make an interesting pair, but Palm Beach's list is shorter and less old.

Both towns go to bed early. What differs is where you drink. On Palm Beach the island is silent by eleven, and the bars, rooftop terraces and couple of dance spots are over the bridge on Clematis Street. In St. Augustine the pubs and courtyard bars are right in the old town, a short walk from dinner, though there is nowhere to dance.

Palm Beach has the edge because of what lies offshore. Reefs run along the Gulf Stream, and divers come to the shallow site under the Blue Heron Bridge for seahorses and octopus. Inland, the Loxahatchee refuge brings alligators within easy reach, and winter manatees and summer turtle nesting add to the wildlife.

St. Augustine's outdoors is salt marsh, dunes and hammock forest. It is best seen by kayak among dolphins and herons, or on the marsh walks of the Guana Tolomato Matanzas reserve. It is good birding country, but it has no reef life to match.

Palm Beach has Miami about an hour away by fast train, with South Beach, Little Havana and Wynwood, and no car needed. Delray's main street and Jupiter's lighthouse make shorter outings, although the resort towns along this coast look much alike.

From St. Augustine almost every outing means driving. The options are Jacksonville's museums and the Cummer gardens, Victorian Fernandina Beach, or the long two-hour runs to Kennedy Space Center and the Orlando parks.

Both work well for children, in different ways. Palm Beach's island is formal and adult, so families head over the bridge to the zoo, the science centre and Manatee Lagoon, and to Peanut Island's shallow water for swimming.

St. Augustine keeps the Alligator Farm, cannon firing at the fort and a lighthouse to climb close to a compact old town, which makes history an easy sell. Families who want roller coasters drive two hours to Orlando.

St. Augustine is a little easier to manage. Its main sights sit in one flat historic district, with the fort, Flagler College and the bayfront minutes apart, and the beaches are a short drive across the Bridge of Lions.

Palm Beach's walkable areas, Worth Avenue and downtown West Palm Beach, are split by the lagoon, and the zoo, reserves and wider beaches are spread out, so a car is close to essential. In its favour, the Lake Trail makes cycling a pleasure, and the fast train to Miami has no equivalent in St. Augustine.

Palm Beach is a real shopping destination. Worth Avenue has the major luxury houses and jewellers set among Mizner's courtyards, the consignment shops sell designer pieces from wealthy wardrobes, and Antique Row in West Palm Beach is good for hunting furniture and art.

St. Augustine's St. George Street is mostly fudge, T-shirts and pirate souvenirs. The galleries and antique dealers on Aviles Street and a bottle of datil-pepper sauce are the best of it.

Neither is cheap, but Palm Beach is in another bracket. Island hotels in winter cost more than in big cities and restaurants are pitched at the very wealthy, so careful spenders stay in West Palm Beach or come in the humid summer.

St. Augustine charges ordinary tourist-town prices. Rates at the old-town inns climb at weekends and in peak season, and staying in a highway motel or visiting midweek brings costs down further.

A night at the theatre or the concert hall favours Palm Beach, at least in winter. The Kravis Center in West Palm Beach hosts touring Broadway shows, visiting orchestras, ballet and Palm Beach Opera's short winter season, and Palm Beach Dramaworks puts on serious plays nearby. From late spring, though, the programme thins out sharply.

St. Augustine's best stage is outdoors. The Amphitheatre in the woods on Anastasia Island books touring rock, country and folk acts for much of the year, and cover bands play on old-town patios most nights. For opera or a full orchestral season, you would have to drive to Jacksonville.

For real pampering, Palm Beach is far ahead. A treatment day at one of the big oceanfront resorts is the island's idea of relaxation, and the town around it stays slow and uncrowded outside the high season. The catch is that rest here is private and costly, with nothing communal or cheap to fall back on.

St. Augustine offers calm rather than care. The ease comes from the pace of the old town, an afternoon on a B&B veranda or a walk along the bayfront seawall at dusk. A few day spas and hotel treatment rooms are as far as the pampering goes, and the town is at its quietest midweek, once the weekend crowds have left.