Albuquerque or San Diego?

Albuquerque has no beach at all. The Rio Grande is not for swimming, so a hot day means a hotel pool or a drive out to Cochiti Lake.

San Diego is built around its shoreline. Coronado's wide sand, the Mission and Pacific Beach boardwalk, gentle waves at La Jolla Shores and the quieter cliff-backed beaches of North County give you a different stretch of coast each day. The one drawback is that the Pacific stays cool for much of the year.

The two are broadly level, but they eat in very different ways. Albuquerque's strength is one deep regional cuisine: red or green chile on carne adovada, blue corn enchiladas and sopaipillas, at long-running family places in the valleys and along Route 66. In late summer the whole city smells of roasting chile.

San Diego draws on Baja instead, with fish tacos, carne asada and late-night taco shops. It also has more range, from the Asian kitchens of Convoy Street to the Little Italy strip. Both cities take craft beer seriously, and San Diego's hop-heavy brewing scene is the larger of the two.

San Diego has more to see, mostly gathered in one place. Balboa Park's Spanish Colonial Revival buildings hold the art, natural history and air and space museums, and the USS Midway, the first California mission and Cabrillo's landing site add more along the coast.

Albuquerque fills a couple of days rather than a week, but its stories are more particular to it. You get the adobe plaza of Old Town, Native culture told by the Pueblos themselves, nuclear history, Route 66 neon and thousands of rock carvings at Petroglyph National Monument.

Neither city is worth the trip for its nights out, but San Diego gives you more choice. There are rooftop bars and clubs in the Gaslamp, a student bar strip at Pacific Beach, neighbourhood cocktail bars in North Park and the gay scene in Hillcrest.

In Albuquerque an evening mostly means a taproom patio. The downtown bars along Central Avenue fill up at weekends, and Nob Hill is calmer, but midweek the city goes quiet early.

Both are strong outdoor cities, and San Diego has the edge because it adds the ocean. You can see sea lions at La Jolla Cove, walk the clifftop trails at Torrey Pines, explore tide pools, surf, and watch for whales in winter, with pine-forested mountains and the Anza-Borrego desert inland.

Albuquerque's outdoors is all altitude and desert. The tramway lifts you to a 3,000m crest above the city, the bosque along the Rio Grande has shaded paths and wintering cranes, and lava escarpments lie to the west. Summer heat pushes the best hiking into spring and autumn.

Albuquerque's day trips go back through the centuries, and San Diego's take you over a border and up a coastline. North of Albuquerque, Santa Fe fills a whole day with its adobe plaza, Canyon Road galleries and museums of Native art. Further out are the Sky City of Acoma on its mesa, the cliff dwellings at Bandelier and the stone shells of the Salinas missions.

From San Diego you can take the trolley to Tijuana and walk across, drive south to the vineyards of the Valle de Guadalupe, or head inland to Temecula's wine country and the apple orchards of Julian. Trains run up the coast to Carlsbad, Encinitas and Oceanside, so the beach towns are easy to reach without a car.

Albuquerque has one family event San Diego cannot match: the Balloon Fiesta in October, when hundreds of balloons rise together at dawn over the north of the city. The rest of the year is easy-going, with roomy hotels and relaxed restaurants. Every outing means time in the car, though, and the strong sun at altitude makes summer afternoons tiring for small children.

San Diego is still far easier with children. Mission Bay's sheltered beaches let toddlers paddle without waves, Balboa Park's lawns, playgrounds and fountains break up a museum morning, and nobody minds a noisy table. The big parks are spread across the county, so plan on one a day.

Both cities are built for the car. San Diego at least has a walkable core, from the Gaslamp to Little Italy and the waterfront, and the trolley runs from there to Old Town and the border. Coastal trains reach the beach towns.

In Albuquerque, Old Town and the bus along Central Avenue are about all you can manage without wheels. The mountains, the petroglyphs and almost every outing depend on a hire car, although driving and parking are easy.

What you bring home is the real difference. In Albuquerque it is Native craft: silver and turquoise jewellery, Pueblo pottery, Navajo weaving and kachina carvings. To be sure of what you are buying, buy from the artists themselves or from trusted dealers around the Old Town plaza and the Pueblo Cultural Center. Nob Hill adds a short stretch of vintage shops.

San Diego is about malls and boutiques. You will find luxury labels along the open-air walkways of Fashion Valley, a large outlet centre at the border, design shops in Little Italy and North Park, and galleries in La Jolla's village. Its Old Town sells Mexican pottery rather than Pueblo work.

Albuquerque is the cheaper stay, though not a cheap one. A comfortable mid-range room costs about what it would in a European capital. The biggest single expense is the hire car and the fuel for long drives to the mountains, Acoma or Santa Fe. Sales tax and a tip are added to every restaurant bill.

San Diego adds the same tax and tip to higher prices almost everywhere, especially in summer, and a hire car there also means paying for parking. Its cheap pleasures are good ones, though: taco shops, brewery taprooms and an afternoon in Balboa Park's gardens.

San Diego's theatre is a real draw. The Old Globe's outdoor Shakespeare stage and the La Jolla Playhouse both produce shows that have gone on to Broadway, and the symphony plays summer evenings by the bay.

Albuquerque's programme is smaller but distinctive. It has an unusually strong flamenco tradition, weekend Pueblo dances at the Cultural Center and the Pueblo Deco KiMo Theatre. Santa Fe's open-air opera is within reach on summer evenings.

San Diego is the easier place to slow down without leaving town. There are resort spas in La Jolla, Coronado and Carlsbad, a long-standing yoga culture in Encinitas, and quiet beach-town mornings.

Albuquerque has only hotel and Pueblo-land resort spas in the city itself. Its best option for rest lies an hour or more away, in the mineral pools of Jemez Springs and the bathhouses around Santa Fe, though the big skies and quiet evenings have their own calm.