Palm Beach or Varadero?

Both sit on warm, clear water, but Varadero has the better beach. Some 20km of unbroken powdery sand runs along the Hicacos Peninsula, with shallow, sheltered sea and quieter, emptier stretches towards the eastern tip.

Palm Beach's Gulf Stream water is just as warm and blue-green, but the island's public sand is limited to the Municipal Beach and Phipps Ocean Park. Between them are seawalls and private estates, and some stretches narrow at high tide. For wider beaches you drive to Singer Island, Jupiter or Delray, or take a boat to Peanut Island.

Palm Beach gives you far more choice at the table. On the island that means formal French and Italian dining, long lunches on terraces and stone crab in season. Across the bridge, West Palm Beach adds Cuban bakeries, Caribbean takeaways and a weekend green market on the waterfront.

In Varadero most meals come from the resort buffet. The private restaurants in town cook a short list of Cuban staples such as ropa vieja and roast pork, and the menu depends on whatever ingredients can be found. The best of it is in the glass and the cup: rum cocktails and strong, sweet coffee.

Palm Beach has more to see in town. There is Whitehall, the marble mansion Flagler built in 1902, Mizner's Mediterranean Revival courtyards on Worth Avenue and the Norton Museum of Art across the lagoon, enough for two or three unhurried days.

Varadero's sights fit into an afternoon: the Du Pont family's Xanadu Mansion on its headland, a small museum in a wooden summer house and the cave drawings in the Varahicacos reserve. To see Cuba's real history and architecture, you have to leave the peninsula for the colonial cities nearby.

Neither is a late-night destination, and what differs is the style. On Palm Beach island the evening is dinner and a grand hotel bar, so going out means crossing to the bars and rooftops of Clematis Street in West Palm Beach. Varadero keeps most evenings inside the resorts with animation shows, but the town has salsa clubs where locals dance with real skill and a disco set inside a limestone cave.

Both are flat coasts where the best of nature is underwater, but Palm Beach offers more. The shore dive under the Blue Heron Bridge is famous for seahorses and octopus, and the Lake Trail is a long ride in the shade. The Loxahatchee refuge on the edge of the Everglades adds alligators and wading birds, and you can see nesting turtles in summer and manatees in winter.

Varadero's outdoors are mostly boat trips: catamarans to the offshore cays, diving on reefs and wrecks, and kitesurfing when the winter winds blow. On land there are short trails in the Varahicacos reserve and a swim in the Saturno cenote. Further off are the birds and crocodiles of the Zapata wetlands.

Each has one big city outing and a string of smaller ones, but what you find on them is very different. From Palm Beach, Miami is an easy train ride away for Art Deco and Little Havana, but the coast in between is a chain of similar resort towns with little older heritage.

From Varadero the roads are slower, and Havana is about two hours' drive away. The reward is history: Old Havana and the Malecón, the nineteenth-century theatre in Matanzas, the horse carts of Cárdenas and the museum at Playa Girón on the Bay of Pigs.

Both work for families, in different ways. Palm Beach has more to do away from the beach, with the zoo and its panthers, the science centre and aquarium for a wet afternoon and manatee watching in winter. The island itself is formal, though, and a car is close to essential.

Varadero is simpler: a shallow, calm sea, kids' clubs and meals taken care of by the all-inclusive. Beyond the beach little is laid on for children. Parents should pack medicines, nappies and sun cream, because these are hard to find and medical care is basic.

Palm Beach is best explored by bike and Varadero by open-top bus, and in both the part you can walk is small. On the island, the Lake Trail and the flat streets around Worth Avenue are easy going, and West Palm Beach has a free trolley loop. The zoo, the reserves and the northern beaches need a car, though, and the fast train to Miami is the one easy way out.

Varadero stretches about 20km along a single road. To get between resorts you use the tourist bus, taxis, horse carriages or the little round coco-taxis, and rental scooters are handy on the flat roads. Leaving the peninsula takes a transfer, a tour or a hired car with a driver.

Palm Beach is a real shopping destination. Worth Avenue's luxury houses and jewellers are set in Mizner's courtyards, the consignment shops sell designer pieces from local wardrobes and Antique Row in West Palm Beach is full of furniture and decorative arts.

In Varadero the craft markets on the main avenue sell carvings, crochet and paintings, and the only purchases worth planning for are rum and cigars from official shops. There is no fashion or design shopping, and even everyday items can be hard to find.

Varadero costs far less. An all-inclusive package there is one of the cheaper ways to get a white-sand Caribbean beach. Taxis, excursions and private restaurants are priced for foreigners, though, so travelling around on your own pushes the cost up.

Palm Beach is among the most expensive resorts in the United States, from winter hotel rooms to beach parking. Staying in West Palm Beach, coming in the humid summer and making the most of the free beaches and the Lake Trail all help, but it never becomes cheap.

Palm Beach has a proper stage in winter. The Kravis Center hosts touring musicals, orchestras, ballet and Palm Beach Opera, and Palm Beach Dramaworks puts on serious plays. From late spring the programme thins sharply.

Varadero has no theatre or concert hall, but live music is part of every day: son and salsa trios on hotel terraces, strong bands in the dance clubs and cabaret with feathers in the resorts. For ballet or serious Cuban music, you need to go to Havana.

Neither has a bathing tradition, so in both places wellness means resort spas and slow days. Palm Beach's oceanfront resorts have the larger, more polished spas, with salt-water pools and fitness programmes, on a quiet, manicured island. Varadero's hotel spas, often in open-air cabins by the sea, vary more in standard, though the calm resorts towards the eastern tip make it easy to do nothing at all.