St. Augustine or Williamsburg, Virginia?

The sea is a real part of a St. Augustine stay. Anastasia Island's long, pale beaches, from the state park dunes down to quieter Crescent Beach, are a short drive across the Bridge of Lions, and plenty of visitors spend the morning at the fort and the afternoon on the sand. The water is often churned and greenish rather than clear.

Williamsburg is inland between two rivers, so for most visitors a beach means one day out. The small strip at Yorktown is calm but modest, and Virginia Beach's Atlantic resort sand is about an hour away. In high summer, sea nettles can drift into the bay.

St. Augustine has the more distinctive cooking. Its Minorcan heritage brings the hot datil pepper into chowder, pilau and sauces, and you can eat shrimp and oysters by the river and the marsh creeks. A few chef-led places around the old town and San Marco add some ambition.

Williamsburg's best food is simple Virginia fare: ham biscuits, peanut soup, Chesapeake crab cakes and local wine. The candlelit colonial taverns are more about the setting than the cooking, and Richmond Road's pancake houses and buffets mainly feed the theme-park crowds.

Both towns repay two or three days of history, but the history is of different kinds. St. Augustine has two layers. One is Spanish, starting in 1565, with the coquina-stone Castillo de San Marcos and the balconied lanes of the Spanish quarter. The other is Gilded Age, in Flagler's ornate hotels, one now a college and one the Lightner Museum.

Williamsburg tells one story in great depth. It is a whole eighteenth-century English colonial capital brought back to life, with costumed interpreters at work along Duke of Gloucester Street, the Wren Building at the college, and serious folk-art and decorative-arts collections. It is a more immersive experience, though more of it is reconstructed.

Neither town has clubs, but St. Augustine has more of an evening. There is a cluster of pubs, taverns and cocktail bars around St. George Street and the bayfront, many with courtyards and patios, a weekend crowd of visitors and a few beach bars on the island.

In Williamsburg, a candlelit ghost walk or a tavern supper is as late as most visitors go. There are student pubs by the college and a few taprooms on the edge of town. For a proper night out, people drive to Norfolk or Richmond.

St. Augustine's coast gives you more to do outdoors. You can paddleboard on the lagoon in Anastasia State Park, follow trails through the dunes, walk the marshes of the Guana Tolomato Matanzas reserve, or kayak the creeks, where dolphins often surface.

Williamsburg's Tidewater is greener and wooded. Its strengths are cycling the quiet Colonial Parkway or the paved Capital Trail from Jamestown, gentle forest paths, and kayaking on the Chickahominy, where bald eagles are possible. The outdoor seasons also differ: St. Augustine is most comfortable from late autumn to spring, Williamsburg in spring and autumn.

Williamsburg sits at the centre of the Historic Triangle, so its best outings are minutes away. You can see the dig and the replica ships at Jamestown and the siege battlefield at Yorktown. Further out are the James River plantation houses, the museums of Richmond about an hour away, and Monticello for a long day.

From St. Augustine the trips are longer and more scattered. Jacksonville is about forty-five minutes away and Victorian Fernandina Beach about an hour and a half. The big names, Kennedy Space Center and Orlando, each take around two hours each way.

Williamsburg is built for a family vacation. Busch Gardens has big coasters and small-child rides, the water park is next door, and in the Historic Area children can march in a fife-and-drum parade or help in a colonial garden. Family motels with pools are everywhere.

St. Augustine still does well with children, thanks to the Alligator Farm with its zipline, the cannon demonstrations at the fort, the lighthouse climb and gentle summer surf. For thrill rides, though, families face a two-hour drive to Orlando.

The pattern is the same in both: a small, flat historic core you can walk, then roads and a car for everything else. In St. Augustine the fort, St. George Street and the bayfront are minutes apart and sightseeing trolleys loop between them. The catch is driving out to the beaches and parking in the tight old town.

Williamsburg's Duke of Gloucester Street is closed to traffic during the day, and the town has an Amtrak station near the centre. Its theme parks, hotels and Triangle sites are spread more widely, though, so you will drive between them more often.

Williamsburg has the more rewarding souvenirs. Shops in the Historic Area sell pewter, pottery, tinware and books printed the old way, made in eighteenth-century styles, and the brick-fronted Merchants Square adds Virginia gifts and kitchenware.

St. Augustine's St. George Street is mostly fudge, T-shirts and pirate trinkets. The better buys are on Aviles Street, with its galleries and antique dealers, and in the local datil-pepper sauces. Both towns have a big outlet mall for mainstream brands, and neither is somewhere to shop for fashion.

Williamsburg is the easier town to budget for, mainly because rooms are plentiful. Motels, chain hotels and condos line the main roads and are reasonably priced outside summer weekends. The big expense is admission tickets to the historic sites and theme parks, so combination passes are worth looking into.

In St. Augustine, most of the cost is accommodation. The historic inns and the hotels within walking distance of the old town are in demand, and their rates rise sharply at weekends and in peak season. On the other hand, the old streets and the public beaches cost nothing, which keeps the days themselves inexpensive.

St. Augustine has the better live music. The open-air amphitheatre in the woods on Anastasia Island brings touring rock, country and folk acts for much of the year, and acoustic sets play on old-town patios every night.

Williamsburg's performances are part of the colonial setting: candlelit eighteenth-century recitals, period theatre and fife-and-drum corps on the main street, plus student concerts at the college. They are charming, but rarely a reason to stay in for an evening. Both towns send opera and orchestra lovers to the nearest city.

Neither town has a spa culture, and in both the relaxation comes from the slow pace. St. Augustine's version is a veranda at a B&B, a courtyard garden and an evening walk along the bayfront seawall. Williamsburg leans more on resort spas, with treatments and pools at the historic inn and the golf resorts beside the James River, and early walks on the empty colonial greens.