Tampa or Williamsburg, Virginia?

Neither place has a beach on the doorstep, but the gap is wide. From Tampa, the barrier islands of Clearwater, St Pete Beach, Pass-a-Grille and Fort De Soto are under an hour away, with soft white sand and a gentle Gulf that stays warm for much of the year, so several beach days fit easily into a stay.

From Williamsburg, the nearest sand is the small strip on the York River at Yorktown, and the open Atlantic at Virginia Beach is an hour's drive. The water is cooler, swimmable only from June to September, and sea nettles can drift into the bay in high summer, so most visitors settle for one beach day and the hotel pool.

Tampa eats better, largely thanks to Ybor City. The Cuban, Spanish and Sicilian cigar workers left behind the city's own Cuban sandwich with salami, deviled crab croquettes, old bakeries and a tiled Spanish dining room that has been feeding visitors for over a century, with grouper and stone crab along the bay.

Williamsburg's table is plainer Virginia fare: ham biscuits, peanut soup, crab cakes and oysters from the Chesapeake. The candlelit colonial taverns are worth booking for the atmosphere more than the cooking, and Richmond Road is dominated by pancake houses and buffets, so the best meals are the simple local ones.

Here Williamsburg is the stronger draw, because the sights are the town itself. Its restored eighteenth-century capital runs along Duke of Gloucester Street from the Capitol to the Wren Building, with costumed blacksmiths, printers and wigmakers at work, the Governor's Palace at the end of its green and serious collections of American folk and decorative art.

Tampa's heritage is real but smaller: the brick cigar factories and social clubs of Ybor City, the Moorish-looking minarets of Henry Plant's 1891 hotel, and the art and history museums along the river. Art lovers based in Tampa tend to cross the bay to St Petersburg.

Tampa is the place for a night out. Seventh Avenue in Ybor City has dance clubs and a young weekend crowd, SoHo offers cocktail bars and patios, the Riverwalk has rooftops and brewery taprooms, and the winter Gasparilla pirate festival turns the bayfront into a huge street party.

Williamsburg goes to bed early. A tavern supper, a candlelit ghost walk or a pint with students near the college is the usual evening, and anyone wanting clubs drives to Norfolk or Richmond.

Both sit in flat, low country, but Tampa's surroundings are wilder. You can kayak a cypress swamp on the Hillsborough River, paddle mangrove tunnels in the bay, follow the clear, turquoise spring-fed rivers around Crystal River and Weeki Wachee, and spot alligators on the prairie at Myakka River State Park. Winter and spring suit it best, when manatees gather in the warm water near Apollo Beach and the summer storms are still months away.

Williamsburg's outdoors is gentler Tidewater forest and marsh. It is best enjoyed by bike along the quiet Colonial Parkway or the paved Virginia Capital Trail, or by kayak on the Chickahominy, looking out for ospreys and bald eagles. Here spring and autumn are the seasons to come, because winter is cold and summer brings heat and mosquitoes.

Williamsburg has the edge because its outings tell one connected story. Jamestown and Yorktown are each under half an hour away, with the archaeological dig, replica ships and the Revolutionary War battlefield, and the James River plantations and Richmond's capitol and Civil War sites extend it further.

Tampa's day trips are more varied but looser: the Dalí Museum in St Petersburg, the Greek sponge docks at Tarpon Springs, the Ringling estate in Sarasota and the Frank Lloyd Wright campus in Lakeland. Both lists need a car.

Both are excellent with children, and both even have a Busch Gardens: Tampa's mixes roller coasters with an African-themed animal park, Williamsburg's is landscaped as European villages. Tampa adds the Florida Aquarium, ZooTampa's manatees and calm, shallow Gulf beaches that suit toddlers, with Orlando's parks within a long day's reach.

Williamsburg's extra is history children can touch: musket firings, fife-and-drum parades and climbing aboard the replica ships at Jamestown, in a quiet town full of motels with pools. In both, hot summers and driving between sights are the main hassles.

Williamsburg is easier, at least at its heart. The Historic Area, Merchants Square and the college campus form a flat district you can cross on foot in about 20 minutes, Duke of Gloucester Street is closed to cars by day, and Amtrak stops near the centre.

Tampa's walkable core is limited to downtown, the Riverwalk and the streetcar to Ybor City, and the beaches, Busch Gardens and every day trip mean a drive, often through bridge traffic. Outside the historic district, Williamsburg also needs a car.

Neither is a shopping destination, and what each offers is different. Tampa has a big upscale mall with luxury brands, the open-air boutiques of Hyde Park Village and cigars still rolled by hand in Ybor City. Williamsburg trades in the past instead, with reproduction pewter, pottery and printed books in the Historic Area, Virginia gifts on Merchants Square and a large outlet centre, but no luxury labels.

Costs are similar, but the budget is shaped differently. In Tampa the big extras are the car, winter and spring beach-hotel rates and theme parks, though summer is cheaper and Cuban bakeries keep lunch low-cost. In Williamsburg, rooms are plentiful and reasonable outside peak weeks, while admission to Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, Yorktown and the parks adds up, so combination passes are worth checking.

Tampa offers a proper big-city programme. The Straz Center hosts touring Broadway shows, opera, ballet and the Florida Orchestra, the 1926 Tampa Theatre puts on films and concerts under its starry ceiling, and Ybor City has small rock venues.

Williamsburg's performances are part of the period setting: candlelit eighteenth-century recitals, period theatre and fife-and-drum corps on the main street, plus college shows in term time. For opera or an orchestra, you would drive to Norfolk or Richmond.

Neither has a spa culture, and both rely on resort and hotel spas. The difference is where the calm is found: Tampa itself is sprawling and humid, so a restful stay means moving to the Gulf islands for sunsets and long lunches, whereas in Williamsburg the town's slow pace, early mornings on the empty greens and drives down the wooded Colonial Parkway do the job.