Pensacola or West Palm Beach?

Both are excellent beach bases, and the difference is in the type of shore. Pensacola faces the Gulf, with the brilliant white quartz sand and green water of the Gulf Islands National Seashore, gentle summer surf and calm sound-side shallows. It is a seasonal beach, though, and too cool for swimming in winter.

West Palm Beach looks onto the Atlantic, and the Gulf Stream keeps the water warm enough to swim all year. Its beaches lie across the lagoon on Palm Beach and Singer Island, and Peanut Island's sheltered lagoon adds snorkelling. The trade-off is seaweed on some late-summer days.

West Palm Beach eats a little more widely. Stone crab claws and simply grilled snapper sit alongside Cuban and Haitian bakeries away from the centre, and Palm Beach has formal dining rooms on top of that. Pensacola's strength is narrower but distinctive: chargrilled oysters, royal red shrimp and gumbo in casual places on the water, with the beach strip leaning on chains.

The two are close in depth but very different in subject. Pensacola is about history. The Spanish-to-American story of the City of Five Flags runs through the Seville district, and you can explore Fort Pickens on the island and see the aircraft at the National Naval Aviation Museum.

West Palm Beach leans towards art and Gilded Age wealth. Its main sights are the Norton Museum's painting and Chinese collections, Flagler's marble Whitehall and the Mediterranean Revival villas of Palm Beach. Either city fills two or three days of sightseeing.

Pensacola makes for a livelier night out. Palafox Street and the Seville Quarter fill with locals and young Navy crowds, the sand-floored island bars have a summer party feel, and the old roadhouse on the Alabama line at Perdido Key is a rowdy institution.

West Palm Beach has a few blocks of cocktail and sports bars around Clematis Street and Rosemary Square, plus a couple of dance spots. Palm Beach itself goes to bed early. Neither city is for clubbing, and from West Palm people go to Miami for that.

The landscapes are similar, flat and full of water, so the difference lies in what you do there. Pensacola has long, undeveloped dunes and maritime forest in the national seashore, and dolphins in the sound. Inland, the clear, sand-bottomed Blackwater River is good for canoeing and tubing, and offshore a sunken aircraft carrier attracts experienced divers.

West Palm Beach's highlight is the easy shore snorkel under the Blue Heron Bridge, with its seahorses and rays. Inland it has a taste of the Everglades at Loxahatchee, where you can see alligators, and to the north there are turtle-nesting beaches.

West Palm Beach has the better outing by far: Miami is about an hour away by fast train, with South Beach, Little Havana and Wynwood. Fort Lauderdale, Delray Beach's Japanese gardens and Boca Raton's pink architecture are closer still.

From Pensacola, Mobile's antebellum streets and battleship museum are the best change of scene, about an hour's drive west. Beyond that, most trips are to beach towns such as Destin and Seaside, all by car.

Both make easy family beach bases, with different extras. In Pensacola, toddlers can paddle in the shallow sound-side water, and plane-mad children get the aviation museum and the home base of the Blue Angels, plus the tunnels at Fort Pickens.

West Palm Beach adds the drive-through Lion Country Safari, the science centre and aquarium, and winter manatees at Manatee Lagoon. Peanut Island's lagoon is good for calm swimming. Neither has a theme park.

You will want a car in both, but West Palm Beach is less tied to one. Its walkable downtown has a free trolley and a rail station with fast trains to Miami, and Palm Beach is close enough to cycle over the bridges.

Pensacola's compact Palafox district is pleasant on foot. The beach, Perdido Key and the naval air station sit far apart across bridges and highways, though, and the buses are of little use to visitors.

This is where the two cities differ most. Pensacola has a few independent boutiques and antique shops on Palafox Street, a Saturday market and a standard mall inland. Pleasant enough, but nobody plans a trip around them.

West Palm Beach has Worth Avenue, a famous luxury street, with designer resale shops nearby, Antique Row for furniture and lighting, and open-air Rosemary Square. What it lacks is local crafts, which Pensacola's market does sell.

Pensacola is clearly easier on the wallet. Inland and town rooms cost noticeably less than the beachfront, seafood is reasonably priced, and the national seashore is cheap to visit. Its prices drop sharply out of season.

West Palm Beach is expensive from December to April, when Palm Beach hotels are among the costliest on the coast and restaurants charge for a well-off crowd. Summer is much cheaper. Budget for a hire car in either city.

West Palm Beach has more on stage. The Kravis Center brings in Broadway tours, visiting orchestras and the Palm Beach Opera, Palm Beach Dramaworks stages serious plays, and an outdoor amphitheatre hosts big rock and pop tours, mainly in the winter season.

Pensacola's restored 1925 Saenger Theatre is home to the local symphony, opera and ballet. It makes a pleasant regional evening rather than a reason to go.

West Palm Beach is the better place for pampering. Large oceanfront resort spas on Palm Beach, many day spas and the slow, manicured pace of the island make several days of unwinding easy.

Pensacola has only the day spas in bigger beach hotels and some massage studios in town. Its calm comes from empty off-season stretches of Santa Rosa Island and Perdido Key.