Savannah or Virginia Beach?

Virginia Beach is built around its beach. A long strip of pale sand with a boardwalk and lifeguards runs right in front of the hotels, there is surf by the fishing pier, and you can choose between the calm Chesapeake Bay shore at First Landing and the dunes and rental houses at Sandbridge.

From Savannah, a beach day means driving about half an hour to Tybee Island. There you get wide, flat sand and warmer summer water than in Virginia, but the sea is greenish-brown from the marshes, and the beach is usually one day of the stay rather than its centre.

Both cities order she-crab soup and fresh local seafood, but Savannah has more to explore at the table. Lowcountry boil, shrimp and grits, oyster roasts and family-style Southern dining rooms give it a clear identity, and above them sits a small tier of chef-led restaurants in restored townhouses south of Forsyth Park.

Virginia Beach is at its best at the dockside places around Lynnhaven Inlet, with bay oysters and blue crab. The Oceanfront itself leans on chains, pancake houses and buffets, and visitors wanting variety often drive to Norfolk for dinner.

The gap here is wide. In Savannah the city itself is the sight: Oglethorpe's grid of garden squares, Federal and Greek Revival houses, Factors Walk, the Cathedral of St John the Baptist, the Telfair Museums and the Owens-Thomas House easily fill two days on foot.

Virginia Beach is a resort with a few historic markers. The main ones are the 1607 landing site and old lighthouse at Cape Henry and the Adam Thoroughgood House. For serious history you drive up the peninsula.

Savannah gives you more evening for less effort. Street drinking is allowed in the historic district, so a night can wander from River Street's cobbled bars to the taverns of City Market and quiet townhouse cocktail rooms, with art school dive bars on the fringes. St Patrick's Day is one of the South's biggest street parties.

Virginia Beach's nightlife is mostly a summer thing: beach bars, rooftop decks and sports bars along Atlantic Avenue, with sailors and vacationers in the crowd. It goes quiet out of season, and anyone wanting more character heads to Norfolk.

Both are flat coastal country with no hills, and both offer kayaking among dolphins, but Virginia Beach has more wild land to explore. First Landing State Park has trails through maritime forest and cypress swamp, and Back Bay and False Cape protect a long, empty barrier spit that you reach on foot or by bike.

Savannah's outdoors is gentler and more watery. You paddle through the salt marsh at high tide, look for wood storks, walk the oak avenue at Wormsloe or follow the trails on Skidaway Island. Summer insects and humidity make it hard going from June to September.

The day trips are about equally strong, but of different kinds. From Savannah you mostly visit other coastal towns: Charleston two hours north, Beaufort among the Sea Islands, Hilton Head, Jekyll Island and Fort Pulaski on the road to Tybee.

From Virginia Beach the big draw is colonial history, with Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown about an hour away, plus Norfolk's battleship and Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks. From either city you need a car.

Virginia Beach is made for children in a way Savannah is not. The aquarium with its sea turtles and otters, the water park, mini-golf and boardwalk bike hire are all close by, the bay beaches suit toddlers, and Colonial Williamsburg and a large theme park are within an hour.

Savannah is manageable with children rather than geared to them. Trolley tours, the free river ferry, ghost walks and the Girl Scouts founder's birthplace are good treats, but there is no big attraction, and summer walks with small children are tiring.

Savannah's historic district is flat and compact, laid out on a grid, and most sights, restaurants and inns are within a short walk of each other. A free shuttle and a river ferry fill the gaps, so you need a car only for Tybee, Wormsloe or Bonaventure.

Virginia Beach is walkable only along the Oceanfront, where the boardwalk and a summer trolley help. Everywhere else is suburban highway sprawl with sparse buses and heavy summer traffic, so a car is close to essential.

Neither is a shopping destination, but Savannah is the more enjoyable browse. Broughton Street has boutiques in restored storefronts, and art school graduates, antique dealers and bookshops are scattered through the squares. Virginia Beach offers a regional mall, the chains at Town Center and souvenir stores, with its long-standing surf shops the one local touch.

Neither is cheap, and the costs are similar, but they work differently. Savannah's historic-district inns are priced for weekend visitors, and the best pleasures, the squares, Forsyth Park and the cemeteries, are free.

Virginia Beach's prices swing with the season. Oceanfront rooms are expensive in summer and drop sharply afterwards, the beach and state parks cost little, and a car is part of the budget in either city.

Savannah stages its best performances in its own buildings, while Virginia Beach sends visitors elsewhere for anything serious. Savannah's high point is its spring music festival, which brings chamber music, jazz, blues and Americana to the city's historic theatres and churches. An autumn jazz festival fills Forsyth Park later in the year, but between the two there is little beyond bar bands and buskers in the squares.

Virginia Beach is busiest in summer, with touring rock and country acts at a large outdoor amphitheatre and free concerts on the boardwalk stages. For opera, the symphony and the spring arts festival, you go half an hour to Norfolk.

Neither has a bathing tradition, and both offer only hotel and day spas, so rest comes down to pace. Savannah does slow better: a bench under the oaks or the courtyard of a quiet inn on a southern square, best midweek in spring or autumn. At Virginia Beach the calm is mostly limited to early mornings on the boardwalk and the shoulder seasons, as high summer is crowded and loud.