Albuquerque or Palm Springs?

Neither city has a beach. Albuquerque is around 1,000km from the ocean and Palm Springs about two hours from the Pacific coast. The difference is in the pools. In Palm Springs nearly every hotel and rental house is built around one, and lounging by it is much of the point of being there. In Albuquerque a pool is just a way to cool off on a hot afternoon, or you can drive to Cochiti Lake.

Albuquerque is the better place to eat because it has a regional cuisine to discover. Plates come smothered in red or green chile, sopaipillas arrive with honey, and the breakfast burritos are worth a detour. The best cooking is in family places in the South and North Valleys, and the craft breweries add an evening of their own.

Palm Springs eats in a more relaxed, generic way: brunch on shaded patios and pleasant American menus along Palm Canyon Drive. Its most distinctive tastes are found further down the valley, in the date shakes from the Indio groves and the taquerias of the farm towns.

Both reward a day or two, but the subjects differ. Albuquerque is about history and peoples: the adobe plaza of Old Town, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, the National Hispanic Cultural Center and the petroglyphs carved into volcanic rock. Palm Springs is about design. You cycle or drive past Frey and Neutra houses and the folded roofs of Twin Palms, then visit the Art Museum and the Cahuilla story at the Agua Caliente museum.

Neither is a place for a big night out, and both go quiet at times, Albuquerque midweek and Palm Springs in summer. Albuquerque's evenings happen in brewery taprooms and patios, with Nob Hill's cocktail bars and a downtown strip that can get rowdy at weekends. Palm Springs has more character: the LGBTQ bars and drag nights of Arenas Road, retro cocktail lounges and weekend pool parties in spring, though few places stay open very late.

Both cities sit at the foot of a mountain with a tramway to the top, but Palm Springs has the stronger landscape right on its doorstep. Ride from the desert floor to the pine forest on San Jacinto, walk to palm oases and a waterfall in the Indian and Tahquitz Canyons, and Joshua Tree's boulders and night skies are about an hour away. The catch is summer, when hiking is limited to dawn or the upper mountain.

Albuquerque has more variety than drama. Trails in the Sandia foothills and the long La Luz climb, the shaded cottonwood paths of the bosque with wintering cranes, and lava escarpments to the west.

Albuquerque is much the better base for day trips. Santa Fe is about an hour away by car, or an hour and a half on the commuter train, and fills a whole day with its plaza, the Canyon Road galleries and its museums. Beyond it lie Acoma's Sky City, the cliff dwellings at Bandelier, Chimayo and the Turquoise Trail villages.

From Palm Springs the outings are smaller and odder: the pine village of Idyllwild, the old film set at Pioneertown, and Salvation Mountain by the Salton Sea. Los Angeles and San Diego are really too far to go and come back in a day.

Albuquerque is built more for children. The BioPark combines a zoo, an aquarium and gardens; Explora and the natural history museum sit side by side; and the Balloon Fiesta at dawn is a memory that lasts. Restaurants and hotels are relaxed about families.

Palm Springs has good outings in the Living Desert, the Air Museum and the tramway with snow at the top. But the town is designed for adults, with adults-only hotels and pool-party weekends, so families are usually better off in the bigger resorts down the valley.

Both are car towns, each with one small area you can walk. In Albuquerque that is Old Town, plus a useful bus along Central Avenue and a commuter train to Santa Fe. In Palm Springs it is the flat downtown strip, and bikes work well for touring the modernist neighbourhoods in the cooler months, though summer heat rules out walking at midday. Both airports are close to town.

Both are good for one speciality, and they are very different. Albuquerque's is Native craft: turquoise and silver jewellery, Pueblo pottery and Navajo weaving around Old Town and the Pueblo Cultural Center. Palm Springs sells mid-century furniture, lighting and vintage clothes in the Uptown Design District, and has the luxury of El Paseo and the Cabazon outlets close by.

Albuquerque is cheaper for most of the year. Hotels are fairly priced, the New Mexican plates are generous, and Old Town, the petroglyphs and the foothill trails cost little. The one week to avoid is the Balloon Fiesta, when room rates jump.

Palm Springs is expensive in its winter and spring high season, when boutique hotels and pool houses charge resort prices. The way to save is to come in summer, when room rates collapse, if you can stand the heat. You will need a hire car in either city.

The two are evenly matched but offer quite different things. Albuquerque has an orchestra and touring Broadway at Popejoy Hall, the Pueblo Deco KiMo Theatre, a long flamenco tradition and weekend Native dances, with the Santa Fe opera within reach in summer. Palm Springs has drag cabaret and piano bars, touring shows at the McCallum Theatre and casino concerts, plus the Coachella and Stagecoach festivals in April. Little happens there in summer.

This is where Palm Springs is far ahead. You can soak in the hot spring the town was founded on, or in the spa motels of Desert Hot Springs, which fill their pools straight from the ground, and resort spas line the valley. The whole pace of the place, from late breakfast to pool to evening drink, is about rest.

Albuquerque has hotel spas, some on Pueblo lands, and a calm pace, but for a proper soak you need to drive out to Jemez Springs or the bathhouses around Santa Fe.