Carmel-by-the-Sea or Santa Barbara?

Carmel Beach is the lovelier place for a sunset walk, a white curve of sand under the cypresses with views across to Pebble Beach. The water stays cold and the surf strong, though, and the coves to the south are too dangerous for swimming, so most visitors swim in a hotel pool.

Santa Barbara is where you actually get in the sea. Its beaches face south behind the Channel Islands, so the surf is gentler, and there are more of them, from East Beach in town to the shallows at Carpinteria. In late summer the water is several degrees warmer than at Carmel, although swims are still short and many people wear wetsuits.

Both towns pour Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from nearby hills and cook from the local catch, but Santa Barbara gives you more ways to eat. Its farmers' markets, the walkable tasting rooms of the Funk Zone and the long-established taquerias along Milpas Street add a casual, cheaper layer that Carmel largely lacks.

Carmel's strength is the intimate dinner: candlelit French and Italian rooms in cottages, sand dabs and Dungeness crab, and breakfast at a courtyard bakery. For anything else, you drive to Monterey.

Each town has a great Franciscan mission, and Carmel's, where Junípero Serra is buried, is among the finest in California. Beyond the mission, Carmel's culture is its storybook cottages, its galleries and Robinson Jeffers' Tor House, which together fill a morning or two.

Santa Barbara gives you more for a longer stay. The whole centre was rebuilt in Spanish Colonial Revival style after the 1925 earthquake, and it adds the County Courthouse with its clock tower, the Presidio and two proper museums, one of art and one of natural history.

Neither town is a destination for nights out, but the gap between them is real. In Carmel an evening ends with a tasting room, a long dinner and a nightcap in a hotel lounge, and the village is silent by ten. Santa Barbara at least has wine bars and breweries that are busy in the Funk Zone, plus bars and small dance floors on lower State Street, which get livelier with students at weekends.

Both are superb, but Carmel has the edge on scenery. Point Lobos, with its granite headlands, sea otters and harbour seals, is five minutes away, and the Big Sur coast runs south past Bixby Bridge to the redwoods.

Santa Barbara is stronger for mountain hiking that starts right in town, with canyon trails up into the Santa Ynez range. It also has surfing at Rincon and boats to Channel Islands National Park, and its whale-watching season adds humpbacks and blue whales in summer.

There are about as many day trips from one as from the other, so the difference is in flavour. From Carmel the outings are coastal and close: Cannery Row and the old adobes of Monterey, the lighthouse at Pacific Grove, the Carmel Valley wineries and Steinbeck country around Salinas. Santa Cruz's boardwalk is about an hour north, and San Francisco is possible but makes a long day.

Santa Barbara's best trip goes over the mountains to the Santa Ynez Valley, with its wine towns, Danish-founded Solvang and the missions of Santa Inés and La Purisima. After that come secondary outings to Ojai, a small arts town in an orange-growing valley, and to Ventura's mission and old main street.

Carmel has one big draw for families, the Monterey Bay Aquarium a short drive away, along with the tide pools at Point Lobos. The cold surf and grown-up restaurants make it better suited to older children who love wildlife.

Santa Barbara is easier with young children. It has calm beaches at Carpinteria and East Beach, a small zoo, touch tanks at the Sea Center, the hands-on MOXI museum and a flat bike path along the shore.

Neither works well without a car, but you need one less in Santa Barbara. Its downtown is flat, State Street leads straight down to the water, a shoreline path links the wharf and beaches, and the coastal train lets you arrive without driving.

Carmel's village is walkable but hilly, its residential lanes are unlit and the buses are thin. Point Lobos, Big Sur and the aquarium all mean driving.

In both towns you browse galleries more than you shop seriously. Carmel packs everything into a few blocks of painting galleries and courtyard boutiques selling cashmere and jewellery. Santa Barbara spreads further, with chain stores on State Street, the fountain courtyards of La Arcada and the other paseos, Montecito's upmarket strip and the Funk Zone's design shops, and its farmers' markets offer the best things to take home.

Both are among the most expensive stops on the California coast, so neither will save you money. The difference is in how you can soften the cost. Carmel has free coastal walks but little cheap food, so many visitors stay in Monterey or Seaside instead. Santa Barbara's taquerias and markets, and cheaper rooms in Goleta or inland, give a little more room to economise.

Carmel's stage life is seasonal: the Bach Festival each summer at the Sunset Center, plays under the pines at the Forest Theater and the Monterey Jazz Festival nearby in September. Outside those seasons, not much happens.

Santa Barbara has a programme that runs through the year. There is symphony, opera and ballet at the Granada, chamber music at the Lobero, major touring bands at the Santa Barbara Bowl and Music Academy of the West concerts in summer.

Both towns restore you through their pace rather than through bathing, with resort spas and no public baths. Carmel's version is misty mornings, rooms with a fire and the spas of Pebble Beach and Carmel Valley. Santa Barbara has sunnier days, yoga studios, a hike up to the hot pools above Montecito and the Ojai Valley's spa resorts an hour away.