Sarasota or Tampa?

This is Sarasota's home ground. Siesta Key's powder-white quartz sand and Lido Key are minutes from downtown, so the sea can shape every day. Quieter Longboat Key, Anna Maria Island and the shark-tooth beaches at Venice add variety.

Tampa's own shoreline is mostly seawall. Its beaches at Clearwater, Pass-a-Grille and Fort De Soto are just as soft and calm, but they lie between half an hour and an hour away by car, so a beach day becomes an outing. The Gulf off both cities has the same summer warmth and the same chill in January.

Tampa has something Sarasota lacks, a cuisine with roots. The Cuban, Spanish and Sicilian heritage of the Ybor City cigar workers survives in salami-layered Cuban sandwiches, café con leche and deviled crab croquettes, and food halls in old industrial buildings cover the modern side.

Sarasota eats well but plainly. You will find grouper sandwiches and stone crab at fish shacks on the keys and polished dining rooms on Main Street and St Armands Circle, many of them aimed at winter visitors. Its one surprise is the Amish family cooking and pie of Pinecraft.

Neither city is a major sightseeing destination, and the difference is one of kind. Sarasota's culture centres on a single great estate, the Ringling, where Rubens canvases, the Venetian Gothic Ca' d'Zan and the circus museum fill a full day, with mid-century Sarasota School houses for architecture fans.

Tampa's interest is social history spread across districts: the brick cigar factories and Latin social clubs of Ybor City, Henry Plant's minareted railway hotel and the museums along the river. Art lovers are better served in Sarasota, while those curious about immigrant America will find more in Tampa.

Tampa is far stronger after dark. Seventh Avenue in Ybor City has dance clubs and a young weekend crowd that stays out late, SoHo offers cocktail bars and patios, and the Riverwalk has rooftops and craft beer taprooms. In winter the Gasparilla pirate invasion turns the bayfront into one of Florida's biggest street parties.

In Sarasota a night out means sunset drinks at the beach bars of Siesta Key Village and a glass of wine on Main Street, with an older crowd and an early finish. Night owls staying there tend to drive up to Tampa anyway.

Both sit in the same flat, subtropical country, and in both the outdoors means paddling and wildlife rather than views. Sarasota has Myakka River State Park, with its treetop canopy walk and alligators, about half an hour inland, and dolphins and manatees in the bay on its doorstep.

From Tampa the choice is wider but further away. It includes cypress swamp kayaking on the Hillsborough River, winter manatees at Apollo Beach and the clear spring-fed rivers of Crystal River and Weeki Wachee to the north. Bayshore Boulevard also gives runners and cyclists a long waterside path in town.

Each city counts the other among its better day trips, so the lists overlap. From Tampa, St Petersburg's Dalí Museum is only half an hour away, Tarpon Springs and Dunedin are close, and inland Lakeland's Frank Lloyd Wright campus and Bok Tower Gardens add something different.

Sarasota reaches south instead, to the Edison and Ford winter estates at Fort Myers and the 1920s planned town of Venice. St Petersburg is about an hour north over the Sunshine Skyway bridge.

Tampa gives children more to do. Busch Gardens and its water park, ZooTampa's manatees, the Florida Aquarium and the Glazer Children's Museum can fill several days, and Legoland and the Orlando parks are within reach for a longer outing.

Sarasota's strength is the sea itself. The shallow, wave-free water off Siesta Key and Lido Key is ideal for toddlers, and Mote Marine's aquarium and the Ringling's circus model make good half days. Beyond that the list runs short, and Busch Gardens is more than an hour's drive away.

Both cities need a car, but Sarasota is a little easier without one. Downtown, St Armands Circle and Siesta Key Village are walkable pockets, a free trolley runs along Siesta Key, and the beaches are a short hop from town, though winter traffic on the bridges to the keys can crawl.

Tampa's walkable core of downtown, the Channel District and Ybor City is linked by the heritage streetcar and the Riverwalk. The beaches, Busch Gardens and South Tampa are all a drive or a ride-hail away, and rush hour slows the interstates.

Sarasota shops like a resort town, and Tampa like a mid-sized American city. In Sarasota the pleasure is browsing: resort wear, jewellery and art galleries around St Armands Circle, and independent boutiques on Main Street and Palm Avenue, easy to fit around an afternoon on Lido Key.

Tampa has the luxury labels and department stores, gathered in its large upscale mall near the airport, and a pleasant open-air cluster of boutiques at Hyde Park Village. It also has a local product that Sarasota lacks: cigars still rolled by hand in small Ybor City shops.

Tampa is the cheaper base, though neither is a bargain. It costs about what an average American city does, and Cuban bakeries and sandwich counters keep lunch inexpensive. For families, the expense that bites is theme park tickets.

Sarasota is priced as a resort. Beachfront rentals on Siesta Key and Longboat Key are at their dearest from January to April, and much of the dining is aimed at affluent winter visitors. Both get cheaper in summer, and in both a hire car adds to the bill.

Sarasota punches well above its size here. It has its own opera in a restored 1920s theatre, a ballet company known for Frederick Ashton, a full orchestra season and the Asolo Rep on the Ringling grounds, most of it running from autumn to spring.

Tampa's programme is mostly touring: Broadway musicals at the Straz Center, arena concerts, the ornate 1926 Tampa Theatre and rock and indie venues in Ybor City. Go to Sarasota for resident companies, and to Tampa for big touring shows and gigs.

Sarasota is the more restful stay. The whole town moves slowly, there are spas on Longboat Key and Lido Key and sunrise yoga on the sand, and Warm Mineral Springs, about forty minutes south, offers year-round warm mineral bathing with no counterpart near Tampa.

Tampa itself is sprawling and humid, and its calm lies across the bay on the barrier islands. A restorative trip there means booking on the islands and treating the city as the outing.