Pigeon Forge or St. Augustine?

Pigeon Forge is a mountain town many hours from the coast. Swimming there means Douglas Lake, the boulder pools in the park's streams or the water park next to Dollywood.

St. Augustine is a proper beach destination. Pale sand runs down Anastasia Island from the state park dunes through St. Augustine Beach to quieter Crescent Beach, and Vilano lies across the inlet. From late spring to autumn the sea is warm and the surf is easy, but in winter the beach is for walking rather than swimming.

Neither town is a place to travel for the food, but they serve very different things. Pigeon Forge runs on pancake houses, Southern buffets and barbecue along the Parkway, and moonshine tastings are its only local tradition.

St. Augustine has more character. You get shrimp and oysters by the water, and the datil pepper brought by the Minorcan settlers turns up in the chowder and the pilau. A few chef-led places around the old town and San Marco round it out. For a serious meal you drive to Knoxville or Asheville from one town and to Jacksonville from the other.

St. Augustine is a real historic town, founded by the Spanish in 1565. It has the coquina-stone Castillo, lanes of balconied houses and a Gilded Age layer in Flagler's former hotels, which now hold the college and the Lightner Museum. These fill two or three days easily.

Pigeon Forge offers a half-scale Titanic, illusion museums and car collections. The 1830 Old Mill is its one authentic building, and the craft workshops at Dollywood are a nod to mountain heritage. For real history you go to the log cabins and churches inside the national park.

Neither town has a club scene, so the real question is where an adult can enjoy a drink after dinner, and St. Augustine is the clear answer. Evenings in Pigeon Forge are built around children, with dinner shows and the Parkway's go-kart and attraction complexes winding down at about ten. After that, the choice is a sports bar, a brewpub or a moonshine tasting, and adults who want more usually drive to Gatlinburg.

In St. Augustine the bars are close together in the old town, from St. George Street to the bayfront. You can walk from one to the next, have a drink outside on a warm night and get back to your room without the car. It suits a few unhurried drinks better than a late night.

Pigeon Forge's real draw is the Great Smoky Mountains, half an hour away. Forested ridges rise above 2,000m, the Alum Cave trail and the Appalachian Trail climb into them, and Cades Cove is full of wildlife. Spring brings wildflowers and October brings autumn colour, though the town itself sits on a valley floor.

St. Augustine's landscape is flat and watery, with salt marsh, dunes and the Matanzas River. You explore it by kayak among dolphins and ospreys, or on foot in the Guana Tolomato Matanzas reserve. It is pleasant rather than dramatic, and summer heat pushes outings into the early morning.

Both have a decent rather than outstanding list of day trips, and both need a car. From Pigeon Forge the trips go into the mountains and Appalachian towns: the crafts loop at Gatlinburg, Knoxville's Market Square, Cherokee over Newfound Gap, and Asheville with the Biltmore Estate.

St. Augustine's trips run along the coast and towards Florida's big attractions. Options include Jacksonville, the Victorian port of Fernandina Beach and Daytona's speedway, plus long days out to Kennedy Space Center or Orlando.

Pigeon Forge exists for families. Dollywood and its water park are at the centre, with mountain coasters, go-karts, group cabins and indoor water-park hotels around them. The catch is that you need a car and will sit in traffic between stops.

St. Augustine works well for children in a quieter way. There is the Alligator Farm, cannon firing at the Castillo, a lighthouse climb and gentle surf, all in a compact centre that is easy to walk. It has no big rides, and for those families drive two hours to Orlando.

St. Augustine is the easier of the two. The fort, St. George Street, Flagler College and the bayfront are minutes apart on foot, so you can park once and walk, although you will need a car or bike for the beaches.

Pigeon Forge is a multi-lane strip where you drive to almost everything. The Parkway trolley is slow and does not reach the hillside cabins, and the national park trailheads can only be reached by car.

The two are much alike here: outlet malls, fudge and T-shirts in both, and no fashion in either. What differs is the crafts. Pigeon Forge sells mountain-made goods, with quilts, pottery and stone-ground cornmeal around the Old Mill and brooms, baskets and woodwork from the studios above Gatlinburg.

St. Augustine's better finds are in the galleries and antique dealers of Aviles Street, and a bottle of datil-pepper sauce makes a good souvenir.

Pigeon Forge is the cheaper base. It has thousands of motel rooms and cabins, and sharing a large cabin between families keeps the cost per head down. Buffets and breakfast houses are inexpensive, so most of the money goes on theme park days and dinner shows.

St. Augustine's historic inns and old-town hotels are in demand, and their rates climb steeply at weekends and in peak season. Staying by the highway or on the island and visiting midweek helps, and the old streets and beaches cost nothing.

Pigeon Forge has many more shows. Dozens of Parkway theatres put on country and gospel revues, comedy, magic and big dinner spectacles every night, and Dollywood has bluegrass through the day. The tone throughout is broad and aimed at families.

St. Augustine has fewer stages and a different style. Touring rock, country and folk acts play the open-air amphitheatre in the woods on Anastasia Island, and acoustic sets fill the old-town patios. For opera or serious theatre, both towns send you to the nearest city.

Neither has a spa culture to speak of, so relaxation depends on where you stay. In Pigeon Forge that means a hillside cabin with a porch and a hot tub looking over the ridges, well away from the Parkway. In St. Augustine it means a B&B veranda or courtyard garden and an evening walk along the bayfront seawall, which is calmest midweek.