California or Grand Canyon?

California has a real beach coast, though only in the south. Between Santa Monica and San Diego's Coronado and La Jolla, the wide sand, surf and piers make a full beach day, but expect cool Pacific water rather than warm sea.

The Grand Canyon has nothing comparable. The Colorado runs cold below the dam, and the pools at Havasu Falls lie at the end of a hike that needs a permit. The nearest swimming worth the name is in Lake Powell at Page, several hours from the South Rim.

Food can be a reason in itself to go to California: Eastside taco trucks, San Gabriel Valley Chinese cooking, Mission burritos, Dungeness crab, and the wine of Napa and Sonoma.

At the canyon you eat to refuel. El Tovar's dining room has the setting, but the rest are cafeterias and chain restaurants in Tusayan. Flagstaff's breweries, green chile and Navajo frybread are the best on offer, and they are an hour and a half from the rim.

California has far more to fill museum days with. It has the Getty, LACMA and the Huntington around Los Angeles, SFMOMA and the de Young in San Francisco, and the Spanish missions strung along the coast.

The canyon offers a small, coherent set of railway-era buildings: El Tovar, Hopi House and Mary Colter's Desert View Watchtower. Add the Museum of Northern Arizona and Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, and you have enough for a morning or two, with Hopi and Navajo art as the thread California cannot match.

After dark the two hardly compete. Los Angeles and San Francisco give a proper night out, from Hollywood's rooftop bars and guest-list clubs to the bars of the Mission and the Castro, and San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter draws a younger, louder crowd. Last orders at 2am end the night earlier than in some cities, and in Los Angeles you need a taxi to get from one area to the next.

At the canyon, the evening's show is the sky, one of the darkest in the country. A lodge lounge or two closes early. Flagstaff's brewpubs are too far from the rim if you want to be up for sunrise.

Both rank among the finest outdoor destinations anywhere, but they offer different things. California is about range: Yosemite's granite, the Sierra and Tahoe, the Big Sur cliffs, redwood groves, Joshua Tree and Death Valley, and whales off Monterey. Those places are many hours apart, so each needs its own base.

The Grand Canyon is one landscape explored in depth. You can walk the Rim Trail, descend the Bright Angel or South Kaibab, cross from rim to rim, or raft the Colorado, with condors overhead and the cooler North Rim forests in summer.

California gives more varied days out, especially from San Francisco. Napa and Sonoma are an hour or so away, and Monterey, Carmel and Santa Cruz make a coastal day. Santa Barbara is the classic outing from Los Angeles.

From Flagstaff or Williams, the outings are mostly red rock and empty country. Sedona and hillside Jerome are the towns. What this side does have is older heritage, with the Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings at Walnut Canyon, Wupatki and Montezuma Castle, but the drives between them are long.

Southern California is close to ideal for children. Theme parks in Anaheim, Hollywood and Carlsbad, the San Diego Zoo and SeaWorld lie within an hour of an Orange County or San Diego base, and the weather is mild.

The canyon does make an effort, with Junior Ranger badges, ranger talks and the old train from Williams. Still, the unfenced edges, the 2,000m altitude and the heat on the descent trails make it a place for school-age children rather than toddlers.

The canyon is the simpler of the two to get around. The highways from Flagstaff and Williams are quiet, and once inside the park you can leave the car and use the free shuttles along the village and Hermit Road, or walk the Rim Trail between viewpoints. Only the long road round to the North Rim really tests you.

California covers far more ground, and the traffic around Los Angeles and the Bay Area makes short distances slow. A hire car is essential except in San Francisco and central San Diego.

In California, shopping can fill an afternoon. At the canyon, it is one quick errand. Los Angeles carries most of California's share, from the luxury houses on Rodeo Drive to vintage on Melrose and the beach boutiques of Abbot Kinney. San Francisco adds the flagship stores around Union Square, and the southern coast adds surf wear.

The canyon's errand is Native American craft. Hopi House and the old trading post at Cameron sell Navajo rugs and silver, and Hopi kachina carvings and pottery, and the staff can tell you about the makers. Beyond that, expect park gift shops and Route 66 souvenirs.

Neither is cheap, but the canyon costs a little less overall. Rooms on the rim and in Tusayan are expensive, but the entrance fee covers the viewpoints, shuttles and ranger programmes. Motels in Williams and Flagstaff, or a park campground, keep costs down, unless you book a mule ride, helicopter flight or rafting trip.

In California the costs come from all sides. You pay for coastal hotels, tax and tips on meals, wine tastings, theme-park tickets and the car every day. Taco stands and inland motels help, but only up to a point.

A night at a concert is easy to arrange in Los Angeles. The LA Philharmonic plays Walt Disney Concert Hall, and in summer there are concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. San Francisco adds opera and ballet of real standing. The big festivals are elsewhere, with Coachella in the desert near Indio in spring and the Monterey Jazz Festival on the coast in autumn.

The canyon's programme is occasional. A chamber music festival comes to the South Rim in late summer, Native American dancers perform in the warm months, and Flagstaff has a small symphony orchestra and a downtown theatre. Most evenings, the entertainment is a ranger talk.

To slow down in California, leave the cities. Go for Calistoga's mud baths at the top of the Napa Valley, the hot-spring pool resorts around Palm Springs, the retreats of Ojai and Marin, or a spa in wine country.

The canyon has no springs and almost no spa. What it offers instead is stillness: an empty viewpoint at dawn, or the slower days in the forest on the North Rim. For treatments and yoga, it is a drive of two hours or so south to Sedona.