Albuquerque or Laguna Beach?

This is the widest gap between the two. Albuquerque is a desert city about 1,000km from the ocean, and the Rio Grande is not for swimming, so cooling off means a hotel pool or a drive out to Cochiti Lake.

Laguna Beach is built around its shore. Main Beach is in the village, Crescent Bay and Shaw's Cove lie to the north, and Victoria Beach and the wide sand at Aliso are to the south. The Pacific is cool outside late summer and some coves have strong currents, but for swimming, snorkelling and lying on sand, Laguna wins easily.

Albuquerque has the better food because it has a cuisine of its own. Carne adovada, blue corn enchiladas and the question of red or green chile are best tried in long-running family places in the South and North Valleys. In late summer the smell of roasting chile drifts through the streets.

Laguna Beach eats well rather than distinctively. Expect fish tacos, poke, local seafood and California wine, often with a sunset view that is reflected in the bill. For variety, visitors drive inland to Orange County's Vietnamese, Mexican and Korean kitchens.

Albuquerque fills a rewarding couple of days. Its sights include the adobe plaza of Old Town with its 1793 church, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, the National Hispanic Cultural Center and the petroglyphs carved into volcanic rock on the city's western edge. The nuclear science museum and the neon of old Route 66 add more modern chapters.

Laguna Beach has one story to tell, its past as a plein air art colony. The Laguna Art Museum and the galleries along Coast Highway tell it, and a morning covers both. The nearest major historic sight, the mission at San Juan Capistrano, is outside town.

Neither city is a reason to go out, but Albuquerque has more of an evening. Downtown on Central Avenue has bars and a few dance clubs that fill at weekends, Nob Hill has calmer cocktail bars, and taproom patios are busy on warm, dry nights. In Laguna Beach a night out means a drink after dinner in a beach bar, wine bar or hotel lounge, and the town is quiet before midnight, so anyone who wants more drives to Newport Beach or Costa Mesa.

Both have excellent outdoors on the doorstep, but of opposite kinds. Albuquerque offers mountain and desert: the tramway to the Sandia crest above 3,000m, the steep La Luz Trail, the cottonwood bosque along the Rio Grande where cranes spend the winter, and volcanic cones to the west.

Laguna Beach combines chaparral hills for hiking and mountain biking with a protected coastline for tide pooling, snorkelling over kelp, kayaking and spotting dolphins. Choose Albuquerque for big views and high walking in spring and autumn, and Laguna for time in and on the water.

Laguna Beach has the wider choice of day trips. Mission San Juan Capistrano is twenty minutes inland, a ferry crosses to Catalina, and San Diego's Balboa Park and Gaslamp Quarter, Los Angeles and the Temecula vineyards are all within a drive.

Albuquerque has one outstanding outing, Santa Fe, which you can reach by commuter train as well as by road. Beyond that its options are remarkable but scattered: Acoma's Sky City, the cliff dwellings at Bandelier, Chimayo and the Turquoise Trail all need a car, and Taos works better as an overnight stay.

Laguna Beach has the edge for children, mostly because of the shore. It has lifeguarded beaches, tide pools full of anemones and crabs and easy snorkelling, and Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm are about forty minutes away. The downsides are steep stairways down to the coves, scarce parking and expensive family rooms.

Albuquerque also does well for families, with the BioPark's zoo and aquarium, the hands-on Explora science centre, the dinosaur halls and the tramway ride. In October, hundreds of balloons rising together at dawn at the Balloon Fiesta is a sight few children forget. Everything is a drive, though, and the summer sun at altitude is strong.

You need a car in both, but Laguna Beach is a little easier without one. Its village is walkable and a free trolley runs along Coast Highway between the beaches, although the town is hilly and parking is hard to find.

Albuquerque is spread low across a wide valley. Beyond Old Town and the bus along Central Avenue, the mountains, the petroglyphs and the day trips all need a car. In return, driving and parking are straightforward and the airport is close to the centre.

Neither is a shopping destination, and what each sells is quite different. Albuquerque's speciality is Native American and Southwestern craft: silver and turquoise jewellery, Pueblo pottery and Navajo weaving. These are best bought around Old Town or at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, directly from the artists or from reputable dealers.

Laguna Beach has galleries of plein air and ocean painting, beachwear and home-decor shops on Forest Avenue, and summer art festivals selling crafts from the makers. Luxury labels are half an hour away in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, which Albuquerque has no match for.

Albuquerque is clearly the cheaper of the two, though neither makes for a cheap visit. Its rooms and generous New Mexican plates cost noticeably less than Laguna's, and Old Town, the petroglyphs and the foothills trails are free or close to it. Both need a rental car, so that cost is the same either way.

Laguna Beach is one of the most expensive beach towns on the California coast, and summer weekends push rates higher still, for clifftop resorts and simple motels alike. Its coves, tide pools, canyon trails and coastal trolley cost nothing, so most of the money goes on where you sleep and eat, not on what you do during the day.

The two are level, and each has one thing worth planning around. In Albuquerque it is flamenco, with a long-established institute and an annual festival that brings performers from Spain. On top of that come weekend Pueblo dances at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center and shows inside the Pueblo Deco KiMo Theatre.

Laguna Beach has the Pageant of the Masters, where live performers recreate famous artworks on summer evenings in Laguna Canyon, and the long-running Laguna Playhouse. Albuquerque has Popejoy Hall in town for its orchestra and Broadway tours, while Laguna sends audiences half an hour away to Costa Mesa.

Laguna Beach is the better place to unwind. With clifftop walks in the morning, sunsets over the Pacific, yoga studios in the village and resort spas with ocean views, rest is the point of the stay, even if most of it comes at a high price.

In Albuquerque, relaxation comes from the dry air and quiet evenings, and from resort spas on Pueblo lands just outside town. Its real strength lies a drive away: the mineral pools of Jemez Springs and the bathhouses around Santa Fe, which Laguna has nothing to match.