Pigeon Forge or St. Petersburg, Florida?

Pigeon Forge has no beach life. Summer swimming means Douglas Lake, the boulder pools in the park's streams, or the water park beside Dollywood.

St. Petersburg is built around its beaches. The barrier islands give you fine white sand and gentle water at St. Pete Beach and Pass-a-Grille, wilder shores at Fort De Soto, and Caladesi Island by ferry. The one catch is that downtown sits on the bay, so every beach day starts with a short trip west.

Meals in Pigeon Forge are about quantity and comfort: pancake houses, Southern buffets, barbecue and moonshine tastings along the Parkway. For cooking with any ambition you have to drive to Knoxville or Asheville.

St. Petersburg eats noticeably better. It has grouper sandwiches and stone crab at the waterfront fish shacks, chef-led kitchens along Central Avenue, and a deep craft beer scene, with Ybor City's Cuban cooking across the bay. It is pleasant rather than a destination in itself, but it gives you far more choice than the Parkway buffets.

In Pigeon Forge the sights are made for fun rather than history. You get a half-scale Titanic and illusion museums, and the 1830 Old Mill is the only real piece of the past in town. For heritage, people go to the log cabins and churches inside the national park.

St. Petersburg has a proper museum quarter on its waterfront. The Dalí Museum anchors it, alongside fine art, Western art, Chihuly glass and Arts and Crafts collections, and the city adds 1920s Mediterranean Revival buildings and street murals.

Nights in Pigeon Forge end early and are aimed at families. The go-kart tracks and attraction complexes wind down around ten, and drinking is limited to a few brewpubs and moonshine rooms. Adults who want more usually drive to Gatlinburg.

St. Petersburg gives you a proper evening out. You can walk between cocktail bars, rooftops and taprooms on Central Avenue or watch the sunset from a beach tiki bar. Neither town is for clubbing, but Ybor City in Tampa is close enough for a rowdier night.

Pigeon Forge is the gateway to serious mountains. The Smokies rise above 2,000m, the Appalachian Trail runs along the crest, and Cades Cove and Newfound Gap Road show off bears, wildflowers and October colour. The town itself sits in a valley, but the park is half an hour away.

St. Petersburg's nature is flat water rather than high ground. You get kayak trails through the mangroves at Weedon Island and Shell Key, with dolphins and winter manatees, plus birding at Fort De Soto. It is gentle and appealing, but it cannot match a national park.

St. Petersburg has slightly more variety within reach. Ybor City and Tampa are across the bay, the Ringling is in Sarasota, the Greek sponge docks are at Tarpon Springs, and Orlando is at the edge of a long day.

From Pigeon Forge the outings follow the mountains. You can visit the craft studios at Gatlinburg, Knoxville's Market Square, the Cherokee museum over Newfound Gap, and Asheville's Biltmore Estate for the best full day. Beyond those the list runs thin quickly.

Both work well with children, but Pigeon Forge exists for them. Dollywood and its water park are the centre of the stay, with go-karts, mountain coasters and big group cabins around them. The drawback is summer traffic on the Parkway.

St. Petersburg is the better choice for a beach-based family vacation. It has shallow, gentle surf, a hands-on children's museum and the marine aquarium in Clearwater, with Busch Gardens and Orlando within driving range. Midday heat and storms in summer make it hard going with small children.

Neither is easy without a car, but St. Petersburg has a walkable core. The pier, the museums, the waterfront parks and Central Avenue all sit close together, and a rapid bus runs to St. Pete Beach.

Pigeon Forge is a multi-lane strip where you can walk only inside each attraction complex. The trolley is slow and does not reach the cabins, and you can only get to the trailheads by car.

The shopping is about equal, but the two towns sell different things. Pigeon Forge has big outlet malls of American brands, plus quilts, pottery and cornmeal at the Old Mill and handmade brooms and baskets in the Gatlinburg craft studios.

St. Petersburg is about small independent shops, with vintage clothes, records and local glass along Central Avenue and a winter Saturday market. Neither has luxury shopping.

Pigeon Forge is the cheaper stay. There are thousands of cabins and motel rooms, a big shared cabin costs little per head, and breakfasts and buffets are cheap. The costs that add up are theme park tickets and dinner shows.

St. Petersburg charges beach-resort prices, and they peak from February to April. Restaurant bills, a hire car and beach parking all add to that. A summer trip or a downtown base helps keep costs down.

Both towns offer roughly as much on stage, but in very different styles. Pigeon Forge's Parkway theatres put on nightly country and gospel revues, comedy and dinner shows with horses or pirate ships, and Dollywood adds bluegrass during the day. It is all broad entertainment aimed at families.

St. Petersburg's scene is more conventional. The Florida Orchestra plays at the Mahaffey Theater, and there is a regional theatre company, a former church used as a concert hall, and indie bands in a courtyard venue. Tampa's arts centre covers opera and ballet.

St. Petersburg is the easier place to slow down. There are spas in the historic beach hotels, Pass-a-Grille stays sleepy, and watching the sunset on the beach is a nightly habit, especially restful in winter.

Pigeon Forge offers rest only in its hillside cabins, with porch rockers, fireplaces and hot tubs looking out over the ridges. Down on the strip, the neon and the traffic work against any calm.