Big Bear Lake or Los Angeles?

Big Bear Lake's water is a mountain reservoir. You can swim near the docks on a summer afternoon, and Meadow Park has the one supervised swim beach, but the shore is mostly rock and granite, and the lake is really for boats and paddleboards.

Los Angeles has a real beach culture along more than 100km of coast, from the Malibu coves to the wide sands of Santa Monica, Venice and the South Bay, with lifeguards, volleyball and surf. The Pacific is cool and better for wading or surfing in a wetsuit, but as a day at the beach it is in another league.

In Big Bear Lake you eat mountain-resort comfort food, with pancakes, burgers, pizza and barbecue, and many visitors simply cook in their cabins. It fills you up after the slopes but it is not a reason to go.

Los Angeles is one of the reasons people cross the country. Each immigrant community cooks at full strength, from Koreatown and Thai Town to the Oaxacan kitchens of Mid-City, and there is a chef-driven dining scene on top of that. Grand Central Market makes grazing easy. Just expect to drive between the best areas.

Big Bear Lake has hardly any sights: the Discovery Center on the forest, a small history museum and the gold-rush remains along the Holcomb Valley dirt road. Nobody goes for culture.

Los Angeles offers a full modern art circuit at the Getty Center, LACMA, the Broad and MOCA, plus the Huntington's library and gardens, Griffith Observatory and Hollywood's movie palaces and studio lots. It has no old quarter to stroll, though, and the museums are far apart.

In Big Bear Lake a night out means a beer at a brewpub, or some après-ski near the slopes in winter, followed by an early night. There are no clubs.

Los Angeles has a whole range of scenes: guest-list clubs in Hollywood, the gay bars of West Hollywood, downtown rooftops and casual beach-town bars. The bars close at 2am and the distances mean you usually stay in one district for the night, but you have far more to choose from.

Both have excellent outdoors, of different kinds. Big Bear Lake puts you inside the landscape: ski runs that become bike trails in summer, a lake for kayaking and fishing, the Pacific Crest Trail on the north shore, the San Gorgonio Wilderness next door, and bald eagles in winter.

Los Angeles mixes mountains with the ocean. You can hike Griffith Park and the Santa Monica Mountain ridges, drive up to the San Gabriels, surf at Malibu or take a boat to the Channel Islands and watch whales. The catch is the traffic between trailheads and the summer heat inland, both things that Big Bear's thin, cool air avoids.

Big Bear Lake sits at the end of slow, winding roads, so outings are limited to Lake Arrowhead, the orchards of Oak Glen and the citrus-era streets of Riverside. Most visitors simply stay up on the mountain.

Los Angeles has better options in every direction: Santa Barbara and its mission up the coast, the ferry to Catalina, Laguna Beach and San Juan Capistrano to the south, and Ojai inland. Traffic still decides how far you get in a day.

Big Bear Lake is a good family base on a small scale. Snow play and ski lessons excite lowland children, there is the rescue animal zoo, and in summer you get the alpine slide and pedal boats. Spacious cabins make the stay easy.

Los Angeles goes much further, with Disneyland, Universal Studios, Knott's and Magic Mountain, the space shuttle at the Science Center, the La Brea Tar Pits and the Long Beach aquarium. It would take a week to see it all. The cost is long drives, so families plan one area per day.

In both places you will want a car, but the problems differ. In Big Bear Lake the Village is small enough to walk and a seasonal trolley reaches the slopes, but getting there means steep mountain highways, sometimes needing snow chains, and the cabins sit on scattered forest roads.

In Los Angeles the problem is scale: dozens of districts far apart and jammed freeways. Metro lines do reach Hollywood, Pasadena, Long Beach and Santa Monica, and areas like Venice and Old Pasadena are pleasant on foot.

In Big Bear Lake shopping is an hour in the Village among fudge shops, bear souvenirs and gear rental counters. For anything more you go down to the valley.

Los Angeles is a real shopping city, from the luxury houses of Rodeo Drive to the boutiques on Melrose and Abbot Kinney, design and records in Silver Lake, and serious vintage hunting at the Rose Bowl flea market. Each area needs its own drive.

Neither is cheap, but Big Bear Lake is easier on the budget, especially midweek or out of season, when a group splits a cabin and cooks for itself. Winter weekends, lift tickets and ski hire quickly erase that gap.

Los Angeles costs more in nearly every way: hotels in Santa Monica or West Hollywood, a hire car with fuel and parking, and theme park tickets. Taco trucks, Koreatown restaurants, the beaches and the free Getty help balance it out.

Big Bear Lake's stage is a community arts centre, free summer concerts by the lake and the Bavarian bands of its long-running Oktoberfest.

Los Angeles has a top orchestra at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and picnic concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in summer, as well as LA Opera, Broadway tours at the Pantages and bands every night from the Sunset Strip to Echo Park. Add the Hollywood comedy and improv clubs and Leimert Park jazz, and the gap is enormous.

Big Bear Lake relaxes you by slowing down: a wood stove, a deck among the pines and the private hot tub that comes with many cabins. There are only a few day spas and no thermal springs, and busy winter weekends are anything but calm.

Los Angeles has actual facilities. The Koreatown bathhouses offer hot and cold pools, scrubs and heated floors late into the night, and there are spas in Beverly Hills and yoga everywhere. The city itself is tiring, though, so for deep calm many people head out to Ojai or the desert springs.