St. Augustine or Virginia Beach?

Both towns face the Atlantic with wide, pale sand, but Virginia Beach is built around its beach in a way St. Augustine is not. It has a lifeguarded Oceanfront with a boardwalk, surfing by the fishing pier, calm bay water near First Landing for small children and the dunes of Sandbridge for a quieter day.

St. Augustine's beaches run from the dunes of Anastasia State Park down to Crescent Beach. They are very good, but they are a drive from the old town, and most visitors give them half their time rather than all of it. In return, the water is warmer and stays swimmable well beyond Virginia Beach's short summer season.

Seafood comes first in both towns, but the local flavours differ. St. Augustine's comes from its Minorcan settlers: the fiery datil pepper goes into hot sauces, a spicy tomato clam chowder and pilau, and there are a few chef-driven places around the old town and San Marco.

Virginia Beach is Chesapeake country, with Lynnhaven oysters, crab cakes and she-crab soup. These are best eaten at the dockside places around Lynnhaven Inlet rather than on the chain-heavy resort strip. Neither town has much range, and keen eaters drive to Jacksonville or Norfolk.

This is where the two towns differ most. St. Augustine is a Spanish town founded in 1565, with the Castillo de San Marcos on the bayfront and the walled gardens and lanes of the Spanish quarter behind it. Flagler College and the Lightner Museum add a second layer of Gilded Age grandeur, enough for two or three full days.

Virginia Beach has Cape Henry, where English colonists landed in 1607, along with the old lighthouse and the Adam Thoroughgood House. Together they fill a morning. For serious history you go up the peninsula, which is a day trip rather than a walk.

Neither town is a place for clubbing, but Virginia Beach has more going on in summer. The bars along Atlantic Avenue and the boardwalk fill with vacationers and sailors from the navy bases. Beach bars, rooftop decks and sports bars keep it loud and casual, and Town Center has calmer cocktail lounges.

St. Augustine's evenings are smaller and have more character. Courtyard pubs and taverns around St. George Street and the bayfront mostly wind down well before the small hours, with Flagler College students adding some life in term time. It suits a quiet drink after dinner better than a long night.

Both are flat, watery coasts of marsh, dunes and maritime forest, with dolphins to spot from a kayak. Virginia Beach has a little more space to explore: the cypress swamp trails at First Landing, the long, empty spit of Back Bay and False Cape that you reach on foot or by bike, and a real surfing tradition.

St. Augustine's outdoors is gentler and more about the water behind the coast. You can paddle the lagoon in Anastasia State Park or walk and watch birds in the Guana Tolomato Matanzas reserve. Midsummer heat pushes most of it into the early morning.

Virginia Beach has the stronger list. Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown are about an hour away and make one of the best history days in the country. Norfolk's battleship and waterfront, Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks and Richmond add more.

From St. Augustine, the outings involve more driving for less reward. The choices are Jacksonville's museums and gardens, Victorian Fernandina Beach, or two-hour runs to Kennedy Space Center and the Orlando parks. In both towns nearly every outing needs a car.

St. Augustine keeps children busy with alligators and cannon fire, while Virginia Beach is a whole resort arranged around families. In St. Augustine, the Alligator Farm, open since 1893, has every kind of crocodilian and a zipline course, and the ramparts and cannon demonstrations at the Castillo make history an adventure for older children. Roller coasters mean a two-hour drive to Orlando.

Virginia Beach has more close at hand and more for the very young. There is the Virginia Aquarium with its sea turtles and otters, a water park, mini-golf, bike rental on the boardwalk and calm bay beaches for toddlers. Hotels and rental houses are set up for families, and a large amusement park near Williamsburg is about an hour away.

St. Augustine is the easier of the two without a car, but only because its sights are packed into a walkable core. The fort, St. George Street, Flagler College and the bayfront are minutes apart on flat streets, and sightseeing trolleys loop past them, so most visitors park once and spend the day on foot. Beyond the old town it is a car town all the same. The local buses are of little use, and the island beaches, the lighthouse and every outing further afield mean driving, cycling or a taxi.

Virginia Beach has no such core. If you stay at the Oceanfront, you can walk or cycle the boardwalk and take the summer trolley along Atlantic Avenue, but the rest of the city is low-rise sprawl of highways and shopping centres. Sandbridge, First Landing and Town Center all need a car, summer traffic into the resort can be heavy, and the buses are too sparse and slow to plan around.

Browsing in St. Augustine means the art galleries, antique dealers and small craft shops of Aviles Street and the lanes around it. In Virginia Beach it means a regional mall, the national chains of Town Center and the Oceanfront surf shops, which have deep local roots.

The souvenirs differ too. St. Augustine's datil-pepper sauces are a genuinely local thing to take home, while St. George Street itself is mostly fudge and T-shirts. Virginia Beach's equivalent is a surfboard or surf gear rather than anything made locally.

Both charge normal American tourist prices with tipping on top, and both are cheaper away from peak weekends. The difference is in when savings come. St. Augustine's historic inns near the old town stay in demand, so you save by staying in a highway motel or going midweek. At Virginia Beach, oceanfront rooms fall sharply once summer ends.

In either town the beaches and the walking are free, but the car you need adds to the bill.

Each town relies on an outdoor amphitheatre for touring rock and country acts. St. Augustine's sits in the woods on Anastasia Island, and Virginia Beach's has free concerts on boardwalk stages alongside it. For anything more serious you drive in both cases. From Virginia Beach, Norfolk is only half an hour away and has the Virginia Opera, the Virginia Symphony and the spring Virginia Arts Festival.

Neither town has a spa culture beyond hotel treatment rooms and a few day spas, so rest comes from the pace. In St. Augustine that means B&B verandas, courtyard gardens and evening walks along the bayfront seawall, best midweek. Virginia Beach is calmest on the boardwalk early in the morning and in spring and autumn, but in high summer it is crowded and loud.