Panama City Beach or Tampa?

Panama City Beach is built around its beach. Powder-white quartz sand runs the whole length of the town, the quieter stretches are at the western end, and St. Andrews State Park has a sheltered lagoon. Rip currents are a real hazard, so watch the flags.

Tampa's own shoreline is mostly seawall. The sand at Clearwater, St Pete Beach and Fort De Soto is just as fine and the water calmer, but each one is between half an hour and an hour away by car. The beach becomes a day out rather than where you stay.

Tampa has a cuisine with roots. The Cuban, Spanish and Sicilian cigar workers of Ybor City left behind the pressed Cuban sandwich with salami, deviled crab croquettes, old bakeries and a century-old tiled Spanish dining room. Food halls and South Tampa kitchens add a modern layer.

Panama City Beach eats well mainly at the seafood shacks: grouper, shrimp baskets and bay oysters on dockside decks. Chains and themed restaurants along Front Beach Road make up most of the rest.

Culture is one of the widest gaps between the two. Panama City Beach is a strip of condos and attractions built since the mid-twentieth century. The small Man in the Sea Museum and the older streets of St. Andrews across the bay are nearly all there is.

Tampa has enough for two or three days: the factories and museum state park of Ybor City, the Moorish-looking 1891 Plant hotel with its museum, and the art and history museums along the river. None of it is world-class, but it gives a trip real substance.

Panama City Beach offers somewhere to have a drink rather than a night out. You get decks over the sand, frozen drinks at a tiki hut while the sun goes down, and a cover band or DJ near Pier Park. There are no clubs and no real cocktail bars. Apart from March, when spring break gives the strip over to college students, few places still have a crowd late at night.

Tampa is the clear choice if going out matters to you. Its crowd lives there, so its nights don't depend on the season. At weekends the old cigar district of Ybor City fills with dance clubs, South Tampa has polished bars for a proper cocktail, and the city brews and pours serious craft beer. In winter many Panhandle bars close for the season, but Tampa holds Gasparilla, a pirate-themed party on the bayfront that is one of Florida's largest street parties.

Both are flat, and in both the outdoors is about water, but the water is different. Panama City Beach is coastal: tall white dunes and snorkelling at St. Andrews State Park, a rare coastal dune lake at Camp Helen, and dives on offshore wrecks and artificial reefs.

Tampa's outdoors is more about freshwater and wildlife. You can kayak through cypress swamp on the Hillsborough River, paddle mangrove tunnels, see manatees at Apollo Beach in winter and swim in the clear spring-fed rivers around Crystal River. In both places the humid summer is the hardest season.

Tampa has the more varied choice. St Petersburg and its Dalí Museum are half an hour away, and within reach are the Greek sponge docks at Tarpon Springs, the Ringling estate at Sarasota and Frank Lloyd Wright's campus at Lakeland.

From Panama City Beach the trips stay on the coast. Options include the pastel planned towns along Scenic Highway 30A, the old oyster port of Apalachicola and Pensacola's historic district, which is about as far as a day trip can go. Both cities need a car for all of these.

Both work well with children, and Tampa edges ahead on range. It has a big theme park that combines roller coasters with an animal park, a zoo known for its manatee care, the Florida Aquarium and a children's museum, and Orlando's parks are within a long day's reach. The cost is driving to all of it.

Panama City Beach is simpler. You get a condo with a pool, the shallow sea and the St. Andrews lagoon nearby, and go-karts, mini-golf and a water park along the strip. Avoid March.

You need a car in both, but Tampa's centre is at least walkable. A heritage streetcar links downtown, the Channel District and Ybor City, and the Riverwalk joins them along the water. Panama City Beach stretches along one long road with patchy pavements and a slow trolley bus, so even going out to dinner usually means driving.

Tampa offers more choice: an upscale mall with luxury and department-store brands, the boutiques of Hyde Park Village, and cigars still rolled by hand in small Ybor City shops. Panama City Beach has the chain stores of the open-air centre by the pier and beachwear warehouses with shark-mouth entrances. For anything more individual you have to drive to the 30A towns.

Costs are similar: both are priced like any American destination, and both need a hire car. The cheap seasons are opposite, though. Panama City Beach gets much cheaper outside summer and spring break, and a winter condo with a kitchen is good value.

Tampa is cheapest in summer and dearest in winter and spring. Cuban lunch counters are the easy saving there, and theme parks are the big expense.

In Panama City Beach, live performance mostly means cover bands and acoustic sets on beach-bar decks, plus outdoor concerts at the shopping centre in summer. For a play or a touring show you cross the bay to Panama City's restored historic theatre, which has a modest season.

Tampa is a different league for an evening out at a show. The multi-hall Straz Center on the river is home to the resident opera company and hosts ballet, plays and touring Broadway musicals, and the Florida Orchestra performs there. The ornate 1926 Tampa Theatre holds concerts beneath its twinkling ceiling, and Ybor City's small rock and indie venues cover the louder end.

Neither has a spa or bathing tradition, so relaxing comes down to hotel spas and the setting. In Panama City Beach the calm depends on the season, as the beach empties from autumn to spring. In Tampa it depends on where you stay: the restful stays are out on the barrier islands, not in the car-bound city.