Carmel-by-the-Sea or Scottsdale?

Neither is a swimming destination, but Carmel at least has a real beach: a long curve of white sand below Ocean Avenue, good for sunset walks and for children digging, with cold, rough water beyond it. Monastery Beach and Carmel River State Beach are even prettier, but they are only for looking at.

Scottsdale has no sea at all. Water time means the resort pool, a drive to the small sandy coves of Saguaro Lake or Canyon Lake, or floating down the Salt River on an inner tube in summer.

Both eat well and expensively rather than adventurously, but in different styles. Carmel is intimate, with candlelit French and Italian rooms, Dungeness crab and sand dabs from the bay, and tasting rooms pouring Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir. Dinners there end early.

Scottsdale is bigger and louder, with steakhouses, patio grills, sushi and long happy hours. Its local flavour is Sonoran Mexican food such as carne asada and green chile, often at its best over in Phoenix. That also makes cheap, casual meals far easier to find than in Carmel.

Scottsdale has rather more to fill the days. Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's desert studio and part of a UNESCO listing, is a stronger anchor than anything around Carmel. The Museum of the West and the small contemporary art museum add to it, and so do the Heard Museum and the Musical Instrument Museum just beyond the city.

Carmel's culture is concentrated in Mission San Carlos Borromeo, where Junípero Serra is buried, in Robinson Jeffers's hand-built granite Tor House and in the storybook cottages of the 1920s. It is charming, but a morning or two covers it.

This is the starkest gap between the two. An evening in Carmel is a tasting room, a long dinner and perhaps a nightcap in a hotel lounge. The streets are silent by ten, and nothing livelier is closer than Monterey's modest Alvarado Street.

Scottsdale's Old Town has a real party district of patio bars, rooftop lounges and dance clubs open until 2am. It is packed at weekends and when spring training and bachelorette groups come to town. The scene is glossy rather than alternative, but it is undeniably there.

Both are outdoor places, but Carmel's setting is the finer one. Point Lobos, with its cypress headlands, sea otters and passing grey whales, is five minutes away. Bixby Bridge and the Pfeiffer Big Sur redwoods are within an hour, and the bay adds kayaking and kelp diving.

Scottsdale's desert is impressive in its own way. There are saguaro trails in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve, short steep climbs up Camelback and Pinnacle Peak, and longer hikes in the Superstition Mountains. Balloon flights and golf round it out, but summer heat leaves only the dawn hours for the trails.

Carmel's outings are short hops along the coast and into farm country. Scottsdale's are longer drives into red-rock and frontier Arizona. From Carmel, Cannery Row and the old adobes of Monterey are a short drive away, with the Victorian houses and lighthouse of Pacific Grove beside them. The tasting rooms of Carmel Valley Village are half an hour inland, and the Santa Cruz boardwalk is about an hour north.

Scottsdale asks for more time behind the wheel but rewards it. Sedona's red rocks are about two hours north, on the same road as the Montezuma Castle cliff dwelling and the hillside mining town of Jerome. Tucson and the San Xavier mission lie a similar distance south, and the Goldfield ghost town makes an easy half-day.

Scottsdale is the easier choice with children. Resort pools with lazy rivers and kids' clubs can carry a whole stay. The miniature trains and carousel at McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park, OdySea Aquarium and the Phoenix Zoo fill the rest, as long as you avoid the midday heat in summer.

Carmel is quiet and grown-up, with restaurants for adults and water too cold for paddling. Its strength is wildlife: the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the tide pools at Point Lobos suit curious school-age children better than toddlers.

Carmel's village is small enough to explore on foot. It is a square-mile grid where you can walk from the shops of Ocean Avenue down to the sand, though the hill is steep and the residential lanes have no street lights. Point Lobos, Big Sur and the aquarium still need a car, and the local buses are thin.

Scottsdale is a long, narrow city strung along wide arterial roads, and the regional light rail does not reach it. Old Town and its free trolley are the only part that works for someone on foot. In return, driving is simple and parking is plentiful, unlike Carmel's cramped centre at summer weekends.

Scottsdale is the place for serious shopping. It has a large luxury mall with department stores and open-air centres further north. In Old Town, dealers sell Navajo and Hopi silver and turquoise, Pueblo pottery and western boots, which gives both range and something truly regional to take home.

Carmel is an afternoon of browsing. There are galleries of plein-air painting and photography and courtyard boutiques selling cashmere and jewellery, but no department store and no market.

Carmel is the costlier of the two by some way. Its boutique inns and cottages charge luxury rates even outside summer, dinners and wine tasting add up, and there is little cheap food to fall back on. The usual way to save is to sleep in Monterey or Seaside and drive in.

Scottsdale is expensive in its winter and spring season too, but it gives a careful traveller more room. There are motels and business hotels on the main roads, Mexican food across the metro area, and resort rates that drop sharply in the summer heat. Both have free pleasures to balance the bill: coastal walks in one, desert preserve trails in the other.

Scottsdale and the wider Phoenix area offer more evenings of performance through the year. There is the performing arts centre in Old Town and world music at the Musical Instrument Museum. Half an hour away are the symphony, Arizona Opera, Ballet Arizona and touring Broadway shows in Tempe.

Carmel's programme is smaller and mostly in summer, but it has some unusual strengths. The Bach Festival has run since 1935, the open-air Forest Theater stages plays under the pines, and the Monterey Jazz Festival comes each September.

Scottsdale is built for rest in a way Carmel is not. A stay there settles into a rhythm of golf, long lunches, afternoons by the pool and early nights, and the dry air and mountain views do much of the work. Many resort spas take day guests, so you can stay somewhere cheaper and still spend a day at one.

Carmel restores you through quiet rather than facilities: misty mornings, dark and still evenings, a fireside room and a long walk on the cliffs. Its spas are mostly out at the Pebble Beach lodges and in Carmel Valley, and some village inns offer treatments in your room. That suits a slow weekend for two more than a stay built around the spa.