St. Pete Beach or Wilmington?

St. Pete Beach is built along its beach: one continuous strip of fine quartz sand on calm Gulf water, from the relaxed southern end at Pass-a-Grille up to quieter Upham Beach. Fort De Soto and the boat-only sands of Shell Key add emptier stretches, and the sea is warm enough to swim for most of the year.

Wilmington's beaches are good but a short drive away. Wrightsville, Carolina Beach and Kure Beach each have their own character, from polished to boardwalk-casual to quiet. The Atlantic brings more surf and rip currents than the Gulf, and the swimming season is noticeably shorter.

Both coasts lean on seafood, but Wilmington has more range. On St. Pete Beach you eat grouper sandwiches, fried shrimp and stone crab on a deck at sunset, with chain and resort restaurants filling Gulf Boulevard and anything more ambitious found across in St. Petersburg.

Wilmington adds local oysters and flounder, shrimp and grits, eastern Carolina whole-hog barbecue, and a downtown of modern Southern restaurants in old brick buildings, along with plenty of craft breweries. Neither is a destination for food lovers, but Wilmington makes more interesting dinners.

There is little to see in St. Pete Beach beyond the pink Don CeSar hotel, Pass-a-Grille's old cottages and the fort batteries at Fort De Soto. For serious museums you go across the bay.

Wilmington has the history the beach town lacks. Its large historic district of antebellum houses and live oaks, the Bellamy Mansion and Burgwin-Wright House, the Cotton Exchange and the battleship moored across the river easily fill two or three days, and they tell the hard story of an old Southern port.

Evenings in St. Pete Beach peak at sunset, with cover bands on tiki decks, and most people are back in their rooms not long after dark. A bigger night means driving into downtown St. Petersburg.

Wilmington is livelier without being a club town. Front Street and its rooftop bars and pubs fill on weekends, helped by university students, and the beach bars add a summer option. Out of season on weeknights, though, it can be just as quiet.

Both are low, watery landscapes with no hills to climb, so the outdoors means paddling, fishing and birds. St. Pete Beach has mangrove kayak trails, dolphins and winter manatees in the bay, and spoonbills on the flats.

Wilmington has salt marsh, longleaf pine and the brown Cape Fear River, with the undeveloped Masonboro Island for paddling, Atlantic surf at Wrightsville and wild Venus flytraps in Carolina Beach State Park, a plant found nowhere else.

St. Pete Beach has the stronger list. St. Petersburg's Dalí Museum is half an hour away, Tampa's Ybor City under an hour, and Greek Tarpon Springs, Sarasota's Ringling estate and Anna Maria Island make easy outings, with Orlando's theme parks at the far end of a long day.

From Wilmington the best day goes south to Southport and the ferry to car-free Bald Head Island, passing Fort Fisher and Brunswick Town on the way. New Bern and Beaufort, each about two hours north, make longer outings. Taken together it is a gentle run of small towns and old forts, good for filling a spare day or two, but not something to choose Wilmington for.

With small children, St. Pete Beach is the easier of the two. Hotels with pools sit right on shallow, calm water, and dolphin boats, shelling at Shell Key and the Fort De Soto pier fill the days, with aquariums and Busch Gardens within an hour.

Wilmington works well in summer too, especially with a rental house near Carolina Beach and its boardwalk rides. The aquarium at Fort Fisher, the battleship decks and the Children's Museum help on rainy days, but every beach day involves the car and Atlantic rip currents need watching.

Getting around is about equally awkward in both, and a hire car is the honest answer in each. St. Pete Beach is one long strip with a beach trolley along Gulf Boulevard, so you can reach the sand without driving. In Wilmington the walkable part is the compact historic centre and riverwalk, but the beaches lie 15km or more away.

Neither is a shopping destination, but Wilmington has more to browse. St. Pete Beach sells mainly swimwear and souvenirs, with a few boutiques and galleries on Corey Avenue and in Pass-a-Grille.

Front Street and the restored Cotton Exchange in Wilmington add bookshops, antique dealers and independent boutiques, which make for a pleasant afternoon even though there is nothing in the way of luxury.

Wilmington is the cheaper stay. Off-season city hotels are reasonable and seafood and barbecue are fair value, though summer beach rentals push costs up. St. Pete Beach is expensive, above all in late winter and spring when beachfront resorts fill with northern visitors. Motels a block back from the sand and the late-summer lull help there. Both mean paying for a hire car and tipping on every meal.

In St. Pete Beach, live performance means an acoustic set or a cover band at a beach bar. The orchestra and theatres are in St. Petersburg, and the touring musicals are in Tampa.

Wilmington has a real scene of its own for a city its size. Thalian Hall, a restored 19th-century opera house, stages theatre and music, a community symphony and small companies add to it, and summer brings bands to outdoor stages by Greenfield Lake and long-running jazz and blues festivals.

Neither has a bathing tradition, so it comes down to resort spas and pace, and here St. Pete Beach is better for unwinding. Its days slide from a morning walk on the sand to a long afternoon and the shared sunset, and Pass-a-Grille feels especially unhurried. Wilmington offers downtown day spas, yoga studios and calm waterfront evenings, but in summer the beach is a drive and a parking hunt rather than right outside your door.