Carmel-by-the-Sea or Huntington Beach?

Both towns sit on fine sand beside a cold, powerful Pacific, but only one of them is really a beach town. Carmel Beach is a white curve below the cypresses, good for dog walks and sunsets. The coves to the south are too steep and dangerous for swimming, so most visitors swim in a hotel pool.

Huntington Beach has about 14km of wide, flat sand with volleyball nets, bonfire rings and lifeguards. Its water is several degrees warmer, warm enough for a proper swim in late summer. Rip currents mean you should stay near the lifeguard towers, but here a day on the beach is the whole point of the trip.

You eat about equally well in both towns, but in opposite styles. Carmel offers candlelit French and Italian dining rooms, Dungeness crab and sand dabs from the bay, and tasting rooms pouring Pinot Noir from the Santa Lucia Highlands. Meals are refined, early and expensive, and there is little that is casual.

Huntington Beach is the opposite: fish tacos by the pier, surfers' breakfasts and brewpubs, with fine dining a drive away in Newport Beach. Its real strength is Little Saigon just inland, where the pho and banh mi bring a kind of cooking that Carmel doesn't have.

Carmel has more to see, although neither town is a culture destination. Mission San Carlos Borromeo, where Junípero Serra is buried, is one of the finest missions in California. The storybook cottages from the 1920s, the houses of the old artists' colony and Robinson Jeffers' Tor House give the village a real sense of place.

Huntington Beach's sights are mostly about surfing: the pier, the International Surfing Museum and the handprints of the Surfers' Hall of Fame. Around them are postwar suburbs with little old architecture, so for heritage you drive to Los Angeles or San Juan Capistrano.

Huntington Beach is the only one of the two with a real night out. On Friday and Saturday nights, Main Street fills up with sports bars, rooftop beach bars and a few places to dance, and it is loud and young in summer. Weeknights are quiet, and it is all on one strip.

Carmel has almost no nightlife: a wine bar before it closes, dinner and a nightcap in a hotel, with the streets silent by ten.

Nature is Carmel's great advantage. Point Lobos, a few minutes away, has granite headlands, cypress trees, sea otters and seals, with grey whales offshore in winter and spring. Beyond it the Big Sur coast runs to Bixby Bridge and the redwoods of Pfeiffer Big Sur. Inland there is dry oak-woodland hiking in Carmel Valley, and in the bay you can kayak or dive in the kelp forests.

In Huntington Beach the outdoors means the ocean: reliable surf breaks and schools for beginners, paddling in the harbour channels and a long cycle path. Bolsa Chica is excellent for birds, but the nearest real hills are half an hour away at Crystal Cove, and the land around town is flat suburb.

Huntington Beach has the bigger region on its doorstep. Los Angeles is about an hour away, Laguna Beach and Mission San Juan Capistrano are close to the south, and ferries to Catalina leave from nearby harbours. San Diego and the Temecula wine country make longer days out.

Carmel's outings are gentler and closer to home: Cannery Row and the adobe buildings of Monterey, Pacific Grove, the Carmel Valley tasting rooms and Steinbeck's Salinas. San Francisco is far enough away that it is hard to do in one day.

Huntington Beach is far better for children. Disneyland, California Adventure and Knott's Berry Farm are all within about half an hour, and the Aquarium of the Pacific makes an easy morning. The wide beach, the pelicans at Bolsa Chica and the lakes in the central park fill the time in between, and the town is used to families.

Carmel is safe and calm. The Monterey Bay Aquarium nearby can fill a whole day, and the tide pools at Point Lobos are a bonus. But the water is too cold for paddling and the restaurants are made for quiet adults, so it suits older children who like wildlife more than younger ones.

You need a car in both towns, but Carmel is easier on foot. You can walk its square-mile village grid from Ocean Avenue down to the beach, though the hill is steep and the unlit lanes make evenings dark. Point Lobos, Big Sur and the wineries all need a car.

In Huntington Beach you can only walk around the pier and Main Street, though the flat beach path is good for a rented bike. Everything else, from the theme parks to Little Saigon and Los Angeles, means driving on busy freeways, because the buses are slow and there is no rail in town.

Huntington Beach has slightly more to buy, mostly thanks to what lies nearby. In town you find surf shops, board makers and swimwear, and a locally made surfboard is the best souvenir. South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, twenty minutes away, has the major fashion houses under one roof.

Carmel is smaller and more polished, with art galleries full of plein-air painting and photography and courtyard boutiques selling cashmere and jewellery. It makes a pleasant afternoon of browsing rather than a shopping trip.

Neither town is cheap, but of the two expensive places Carmel costs more. Its boutique inns are priced as a luxury destination all year, and dinners, wine tasting and spa time leave little room to save. Visitors on a budget usually sleep in Monterey or Seaside and drive in.

Huntington Beach also has high beachfront rates and you have to pay for a rental car and parking. Still, the motels on the inland boulevards and the Vietnamese and Mexican food around the county keep a careful trip affordable.

The two are about level here, but their strengths differ. Carmel's arts are seasonal and in the village itself: the Carmel Bach Festival, a long-running summer festival of Baroque music dating from 1935, concerts at the Sunset Center and summer plays at the open-air Forest Theater among the pines. The Monterey Jazz Festival brings the jazz crowd nearby each September, but outside those seasons there is little more than community theatre and the odd concert.

Huntington Beach has little of its own beyond bar bands and concerts in the park. A short drive away, though, Costa Mesa has a much fuller programme: the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, with the Pacific Symphony, touring Broadway shows, ballet and opera, and the theatre season at South Coast Repertory.

Carmel is the more restful of the two. Misty mornings, dark and quiet evenings and the spas of the Pebble Beach lodges and Carmel Valley resorts make it a natural choice for a slow weekend by the fire.

Huntington Beach has spas in its resort hotels and ordinary day spas. Its calm comes from yoga on the sand and sunset bonfires rather than from any feeling of a retreat. Neither town has thermal springs or a bathing culture.