Branson or Santa Fe?

Neither town has a coast, but Branson at least has a real summer swimming season. Table Rock Lake has clear, warm water, public swim areas with sand brought in, and pontoons you can rent and moor in quiet coves.

Santa Fe's high desert offers little more than a hotel pool. A swim in Abiquiu Lake or a float on the Rio Grande is a half-day outing, not a beach day.

Santa Fe is the place to eat well. New Mexican cooking is a cuisine in its own right, from blue corn and posole to the red-or-green chile question. Old adobe dining rooms serve the classics, and the town has a fine-dining tier that is unusual for its size. The Railyard farmers' market is worth a morning.

Branson feeds you plentifully rather than memorably. Expect fried chicken, catfish, buffets, chain restaurants along Highway 76 and set meals at dinner shows. Ozark touches such as skillet cooking, cinnamon bread and fresh lake trout are the high points.

The gap here is wide. Santa Fe has four centuries of history in a low adobe townscape around its Plaza, with the Palace of the Governors, the Loretto Chapel and San Miguel Chapel. Museum Hill and the O'Keeffe Museum would stand out in a far larger city.

Branson's sights are twentieth-century amusements: wax museums, a museum shaped like a liner's bow and a small brick downtown. Its real heritage is Ozark folk craft, demonstrated at the 1880s-themed park, and the Ralph Foster Museum.

Both towns go to bed early, but Santa Fe gives you a little more evening. After a long dinner you can have a mezcal on a rooftop as the sun sets over the Jemez Mountains, visit a brewery around the Railyard, or join the livelier summer nights on the Plaza.

In Branson the evening is the show itself. Once the theatres empty, a few brewpubs and hotel lounges near the lakefront are all that stays open.

Branson's Ozarks are gentle country of wooded ridges, limestone bluffs, caves and lakes. They are best enjoyed by kayak or fishing boat, or on the trails at Table Rock State Park and Hercules Glades.

Santa Fe's setting is bigger and more dramatic. Trails start at the edge of town, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains rise to the Pecos Wilderness, and autumn turns the aspen slopes gold. Valles Caldera, rafting in the Rio Grande Gorge and the red cliffs of Abiquiu add desert and volcanic scenery that Branson cannot match.

Santa Fe has the stronger list of outings. The High Road to Taos runs through Chimayo and Truchas to the thousand-year-old Taos Pueblo. Bandelier's cliff dwellings, Los Alamos, Pecos and the Turquoise Trail villages fill several more days.

From Branson, the highlights are Victorian Eureka Springs and the Crystal Bridges art museum in Bentonville, with the Civil War battlefield at Wilson's Creek as a smaller extra. It makes a decent couple of days out, but nothing near Branson is of Taos Pueblo's stature.

Branson is designed around children. It has a theme park with roller coasters, water parks, zip lines, mini golf, a paddlewheel showboat and caves, and its hotels and restaurants are used to families. The main drawbacks are the July heat and traffic on the strip.

Santa Fe is safe and calm, but it offers children far less. The children's museum, the toys in the folk art collection and the ladders at Bandelier will fill a day or two. Older children who enjoy hiking get the most from it.

In Santa Fe you can park the car for much of the stay. The Plaza, the cathedral, Canyon Road and the Railyard are all within a short walk of each other, though the altitude makes the uphill stretches harder. The Rail Runner train runs to Albuquerque.

Branson offers no such centre. Its theatres and hotels are strung for kilometres along hilly Highway 76, the pavements are patchy, and the evening traffic crawls. Apart from the lakefront shopping district, you drive everywhere.

Santa Fe is a serious place to buy art and craft. Native American artists sell silver, turquoise and pottery under the portal of the Palace of the Governors. Canyon Road's galleries and the summer Indian, Spanish and Folk Art markets draw collectors from far away.

Branson's shopping is mostly mainstream stores at Branson Landing and outlet malls along the strip. Its best buys are Ozark glass, quilts and woodcarving, often made in front of you.

Branson is the easier town on the wallet, mainly because its motels, lake cabins and buffets keep the basics modest. The cost comes from paying for every show, park and boat, which adds up across a week.

In Santa Fe, even the basics are dear. Plaza hotels charge resort prices, especially in opera and market season, and restaurants are priced for a well-off crowd. Hiking and gallery browsing are free, but cheaper rooms mean staying out on Cerrillos Road.

Branson has more live performance, and it runs for most of the year. Dozens of theatres stage country, bluegrass, gospel, tribute acts, magicians and big biblical productions from morning to evening, and Christmas is as busy as summer. The range is narrow, though, with no opera and no theatre beyond revues.

Santa Fe offers less, but at a higher level. The Santa Fe Opera, in its open-sided theatre at sunset, and a summer chamber festival are its peaks, and flamenco has deep roots in the town. In winter the programme shrinks to the Lensic and concerts in churches.

Santa Fe is the better place to slow down. It has onsen-style soaking tubs among the pines, the historic mineral pools at Ojo Caliente, many spas and yoga studios, and a town that goes quiet early.

In Branson, rest depends on where you stay. A lodge spa or a cabin on a Table Rock cove can be genuinely peaceful, but the neon strip between shows is anything but.