Tampa or Fort Lauderdale?

In Fort Lauderdale the beach is the front edge of the city. Hotels look straight onto the pale sand and the palm-lined promenade, lifeguard towers line the main stretch, and quieter beaches run north to Pompano and Deerfield, with a reef close enough to snorkel from shore at Lauderdale-by-the-Sea.

Tampa's own waterfront is mostly seawall. Its real beaches are Clearwater, St Pete Beach, Pass-a-Grille and Fort De Soto. They have softer, whiter sand and a calmer sea than the Atlantic, but they lie between half an hour and an hour away by car. That makes every beach day an outing, unless you choose to sleep on the islands instead.

Tampa has a food tradition Fort Lauderdale cannot match. The cigar workers of Ybor City left behind the local Cuban sandwich with Genoa salami, deviled crab croquettes, old bakeries pouring café con leche and a tiled Spanish dining room that has been run by one family for more than a century.

Fort Lauderdale eats well without a signature dish. The pleasures are grouper and stone crab on a dock along the Intracoastal, brunch on Las Olas, and jerk chicken and patties in the Jamaican and Haitian suburbs to the west. For a serious dinner, locals point you to Miami.

Tampa has more history to walk through. Ybor City keeps its brick factories, ironwork balconies and Latin social clubs, the Moorish-looking 1891 Plant hotel houses a museum, and the art and history museums line the river. All of that fills two or three days.

Fort Lauderdale is younger and its list is shorter: the Bonnet House estate in its subtropical gardens, the pioneer Stranahan House on the New River and the NSU Art Museum. A curious visitor will see the lot in a day and go back to the water.

Both offer a decent regional night out, but of different kinds. Fort Lauderdale's evenings start early at the beach bars on A1A and carry on along Himmarshee Street downtown. Its real draw is Wilton Manors, a nationally known gay neighbourhood with bars and drag shows on Wilton Drive. Clubbing is thin.

Tampa is the place for dancing. Seventh Avenue in Ybor City has the clubs and a rowdy weekend crowd, SoHo has the cocktail patios, and the craft beer taprooms are serious. Each winter the Gasparilla pirate invasion brings one of Florida's biggest street parties to the bayfront.

Fort Lauderdale has the better outdoors, nearly all of it on or under the water. You can paddle the canals and the Intracoastal past waterfront mansions, dive reefs and sunken wrecks close to shore, fish offshore for sailfish, or take an airboat into the Everglades less than an hour west.

Tampa's outdoors is gentler and more scattered. It means kayaking the cypress swamp of Hillsborough River State Park, paddling through mangrove tunnels and seeing manatees near Apollo Beach in winter. The clear spring-fed rivers around Crystal River are at least an hour's drive north.

Fort Lauderdale's best day out is one big city. Miami gives you a full day of Art Deco, Wynwood murals and Little Havana, and you can go by fast train as well as by car. Palm Beach's Flagler Museum lies to the north, and Key Largo makes a long day to the south.

From Tampa you get a spread of smaller places, all reached by car: the Dalí Museum in St Petersburg, the Greek sponge docks at Tarpon Springs, the Ringling estate in Sarasota and the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings at Lakeland. The mix is wider, but nothing on it compares with a day in Miami.

Tampa is the stronger choice with children. Busch Gardens pairs roller coasters with an animal park, ZooTampa and the Florida Aquarium fill whole afternoons, and Legoland and the Orlando parks are close enough for a long day trip. The calm, shallow Gulf beaches suit toddlers well.

Fort Lauderdale's appeal is simpler. It offers a broad, lifeguarded beach with showers and parks behind it, a good hands-on science museum and an Everglades airboat ride. Orlando is about three hours away, too far to manage as a day out.

Both cities are built for cars, but Fort Lauderdale is easier without one. Water taxis on the canals and free trolleys link the beach, Las Olas and downtown, and fast trains run to Miami and the Palm Beaches.

Tampa's heritage streetcar ties downtown, the Channel District and Ybor City together. The beaches, Busch Gardens and every day trip still mean a drive, often with rush-hour traffic on the bridges.

Fort Lauderdale is the better shopping stop. Las Olas Boulevard makes a pleasant afternoon of boutiques, galleries and resort wear, and the huge outlet mall out west in Sunrise draws bargain hunters from abroad. A long-running flea market adds variety.

Tampa is mostly malls plus the small open-air boutiques of Hyde Park Village. Its one real local craft is the hand-rolled cigar, still made in small Ybor City shops.

Neither is cheap, but Tampa costs somewhat less. Its Cuban bakeries and sandwich counters keep lunch affordable, though you will almost certainly need a hire car and theme-park tickets add up quickly for families.

In Fort Lauderdale, beachfront rates climb steeply in winter and over school breaks, and parking near the sand rarely comes free. A summer stay or an apartment a few blocks back from the beach helps most.

The two are broadly level on the stage, and both rely heavily on touring Broadway shows. Tampa's Straz Center has resident companies as well, the opera and the Florida Orchestra, and the ornate 1926 Tampa Theatre is an evening in itself.

Fort Lauderdale's Broward Center has no resident orchestra or opera. It makes up for that with cover bands and acoustic sets in the beach bars, and Miami's arts centre is under an hour away.

Fort Lauderdale is the more restful place to stay. Outside spring weekends the beach town moves slowly, with sunrise yoga on the sand, morning walks along the promenade and resort spas within reach of your room.

In Tampa the city itself is humid, sprawling and car-bound. Visitors who want to unwind usually move out to the Gulf islands for sunsets and long lunches.