Colorado Springs or Kansas City?

Neither city is a place to swim, and in summer both send you to hotel and public pools. The difference is in kind. Kansas City's county parks have sandy lake beaches for a lazy afternoon in the summer heat, while the reservoirs around Colorado Springs are fed by cold mountain water, so time on the water there usually means rafting the Arkansas River.

Kansas City has a dish worth travelling for: hickory-smoked barbecue and burnt ends, served everywhere from old counters near the stockyards to petrol-station joints. Add the steakhouses from its cattle-town days and the Vietnamese and Ethiopian counters of the River Market, and eating becomes part of the reason to visit.

Colorado Springs eats casually, with green chile on the menus, food trucks outside breweries and the Broadmoor's dining rooms at the formal end. Both cities pour good local beer, but only Kansas City gives a meal a real sense of place.

Kansas City has the deeper museums. The Nelson-Atkins is known for its Chinese art and Oldenburg's giant shuttlecocks on the lawn, the WWI museum sits beneath the Liberty Memorial tower, and 18th and Vine tells African American stories you won't find anywhere else. Union Station and the Spanish-style Country Club Plaza add some architecture.

Colorado Springs has a few strong individual sights, above all the aluminium spires of the Cadet Chapel and the Olympic and Paralympic Museum. They are scattered across the city, though, and most visitors fit them into a morning between hikes.

Neither is a clubbing city, but Kansas City offers more choice. There are game-night crowds in the Power and Light District, student bars along Westport and calmer cocktail bars in the Crossroads, with plenty staying open late at weekends. In Colorado Springs the evening comes down to a few blocks of Tejon Street and brewery taprooms that close early, which suits a beer after the trails rather than a long night out.

This is where Colorado Springs pulls far ahead. Pikes Peak climbs to over 4,300m right above town, and you can reach the top on foot, by car or on the cog railway. Garden of the Gods, Red Rock Canyon and North Cheyenne Cañon offer climbing, waterfalls and mountain biking a few minutes from the suburbs.

Kansas City's outdoors is gentler: Swope Park, the rose garden in Loose Park, paved trails along the creeks and wooded walks by the reservoirs, set in rolling prairie. It makes a pleasant morning, but real hiking country such as the Ozarks is hours away.

Colorado Springs has the wider spread of outings. Denver's museums are a little over an hour north, the gold-mining towns of Cripple Creek and Victor sit along steep mountain roads, the Royal Gorge Bridge is about an hour away, and longer drives reach Breckenridge or Salida.

From Kansas City the drives are flatter and quieter: Truman's Independence, the university town of Lawrence, the antebellum houses of Weston and the Pony Express museum in St Joseph. They make pleasant half days. From either city you'll need a car.

Both cities work well with children, but in different ways. In Colorado Springs the outings are outdoors: hand-feeding giraffes at the mountainside Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, riding the cog railway, and visiting Cave of the Winds and the cliff dwellings. Parents need to keep an eye on the altitude and the strong sun.

Kansas City has the big rides and indoor attractions that Colorado Springs lacks. There is Worlds of Fun with its water park, Science City inside Union Station, and an aquarium and Legoland Discovery Centre at Crown Center. In both cities, expect to spend a lot of time in the car.

Both are car cities, but Kansas City gives visitors one useful alternative. The Main Street streetcar links the River Market, downtown, Union Station and Crown Center, so if you stay along the line you can manage a day or two without driving. Colorado Springs has nothing like it. Its sights are strung along the foothills and up mountain roads, and apart from strolling downtown, Old Colorado City or Manitou Springs, a hire car is close to essential.

Kansas City has a proper shopping district in the 1920s Country Club Plaza, where upmarket stores line tiled Spanish-style courtyards. The Crossroads adds galleries and vintage shops, and the streets around Westport have record shops. Colorado Springs shops on a smaller scale but has its own character: rock and gem shops, Western wear and outdoor gear in the old storefronts of Old Colorado City and Manitou Springs, with nothing upmarket.

Day-to-day costs come out about the same. Each city has reasonably priced hotels, each adds a tip to every bill, and each more or less requires a hire car. What differs is where you save. The best sights in Colorado Springs, Garden of the Gods and the canyon trails, are free. In Kansas City the free Nelson-Atkins helps, but tickets for the theme park, the zoo and ball games mount up quickly for a family.

Kansas City has a musical tradition of its own. The swing jazz of Count Basie and Charlie Parker still plays most nights in small clubs around 18th and Vine. The Kauffman Center is home to the symphony, the opera and the ballet, and in summer the open-air Starlight Theatre stages Broadway musicals.

Colorado Springs offers a respectable Philharmonic season at the Pikes Peak Center, theatre at the Fine Arts Center and summer concerts at the amphitheatre. It has no opera house, though, and its stages rarely give you a reason to plan an evening.

Colorado Springs has a real spa heritage. Manitou Springs grew up around naturally carbonated mineral springs that still flow from public fountains, with a small soaking spa looking out to the mountains and the Broadmoor's full resort spa in town. Kansas City has no bathing tradition, so relaxing there means a hotel or day spa, a trip to the old resort town of Excelsior Springs, or a slow morning among the roses in Loose Park.