Savannah or West Palm Beach?

On the beach West Palm Beach is clearly ahead. Savannah's nearest sea is at Tybee Island, half an hour away, where wide flat sand and greenish, marsh-tinted water make a pleasant day out rather than a reason to come.

West Palm has a whole choice of beaches across the lagoon bridges, from Midtown Beach on Palm Beach to the quieter sands of Singer Island and Juno, and Peanut Island adds sheltered snorkelling. Because the Gulf Stream runs close to shore, you can still swim there in midwinter, when Tybee's water has turned cold.

Savannah has the more distinctive table. It has a regional cuisine of its own: she-crab soup, Lowcountry boil, roasted oysters in the cool months and family-style Southern dining rooms. A small group of chef-led restaurants sits in old townhouses south of Forsyth Park.

West Palm Beach eats well but less memorably. The best of it is plain-grilled Florida seafood and stone crab in season, with Cuban and Haitian bakeries away from Clematis Street and formal dining rooms over on Palm Beach. Neither city has much range, but Savannah gives you more of a sense of place on the plate.

Savannah is much the richer place to sightsee, because the whole historic district is the attraction. Oglethorpe's grid of garden squares, the Federal and Greek Revival houses, the cotton warehouses of Factors Walk, the Owens-Thomas House and Bonaventure Cemetery give you two or more days of atmospheric walking.

West Palm Beach has a strong single museum in the Norton, plus Flagler's marble Whitehall and an afternoon of Mediterranean Revival villas on Palm Beach. Its own downtown is largely modern, so the sightseeing comes in separate stops rather than a townscape you can wander through.

Savannah makes for the livelier evening. Drinks in to-go cups let a night move between the cobbled bars of River Street, the taverns around City Market and quiet townhouse cocktail rooms, while art students fill the dive bars. St Patrick's Day becomes one of the South's biggest street parties.

In West Palm Beach going out means a few blocks of Clematis Street and Rosemary Square, busy on Friday and Saturday and quiet otherwise. Palm Beach goes to bed early, and anyone after real clubbing heads to Miami.

Both are flat, watery coastal places, but West Palm Beach gives you more to do outdoors. The Gulf Stream brings reefs and drift dives close to shore, the shallow site under the Blue Heron Bridge is a celebrated snorkel with seahorses and rays, and Loxahatchee and Grassy Waters offer alligators and an Everglades landscape. Turtles nest on the beaches to the north.

Savannah's outdoors is the Lowcountry salt marsh: kayaking tidal creeks, dolphin boat trips, wood storks, and the oak avenue at Wormsloe. It is lovely in spring and autumn, but the range is narrower and there is nothing underwater to compare.

The two are about level for day trips, but the trips are of different kinds. From Savannah you reach places with distinct histories: Charleston's peninsula, antebellum Beaufort, Fort Pulaski and Jekyll Island's millionaires' district. Almost all of them need a car.

West Palm Beach's best outing is Miami, about an hour away by fast train, which gives you South Beach and Little Havana without driving. Beyond that, Delray, Boca Raton and Jupiter feel like more of the same coast, with the Morikami gardens as the standout.

West Palm Beach is the easier family base. Lion Country Safari, the Palm Beach Zoo, the science centre and aquarium and the free Manatee Lagoon centre fill the days between calm, guarded beaches, and Peanut Island's lagoon suits small swimmers.

Savannah works with children but is not built around them. Park space, trolley tours, the free river ferry, ghost walks and the Girl Scouts founder's birthplace keep them busy for a while. With no zoo or aquarium, and with the beach a drive away, it fits older children better than toddlers.

Savannah is far easier on foot. Its historic district is a flat grid where hotels, restaurants and sights sit close together, and you need a car or tour only for outlying places such as Bonaventure, Wormsloe and Tybee.

West Palm Beach has a walkable downtown with a free trolley, and the fast train south is a real asset. But the beaches, the zoo, the safari park and the neighbouring towns are spread along wide roads with poor buses, so most visitors end up renting a car.

For shopping West Palm Beach is clearly ahead, thanks to Worth Avenue. Its luxury houses, jewellers and galleries are set around tiled courtyards and vias that are a pleasure to walk even if you buy nothing. Designer consignment shops and the dealers of Antique Row add more.

Savannah's Broughton Street offers boutiques, home-goods shops and work by art-school students and graduates, with antiques and bookshops around the squares. It makes a pleasant browse, but there is no luxury district, and River Street is mostly pralines and souvenirs.

Neither is a bargain, but Savannah is the gentler of the two. Historic-district inns cost most on spring weekends, while many of the pleasures, from the squares to the cemeteries, are free. Within the core you can manage without a car.

West Palm Beach is among the pricier stays on the coast, especially from December to April, when Palm Beach hotels and the restaurants serve a wealthy winter crowd. Summer rates drop sharply in both places, but in West Palm a rental car is almost always an added cost.

West Palm Beach has the more reliable calendar, at least from late autumn to spring. The Kravis Center brings touring musicals, orchestras and the Palm Beach Opera, Palm Beach Dramaworks stages serious plays, and the Society of the Four Arts adds concerts.

Savannah's peak is narrower but distinctive. The spring Savannah Music Festival fills historic theatres and churches with chamber music, jazz and blues, and an autumn jazz festival takes over Forsyth Park. Arrive outside those dates and there is little more than bar bands and buskers.

The two are much alike here, and neither has a bathing tradition. The difference is in how you unwind. West Palm Beach offers large oceanfront resort spas with pools on Palm Beach and quiet lagoon promenades.

Savannah's calm comes from the place itself: a bench under the oaks or a courtyard in an old inn on a southern square. It is at its most restful midweek in spring or autumn.