Denver or Winter Park, Colorado?

Neither place is for swimming. Both sit deep in the interior and their natural water is cold, so the honest answer in both cases is a pool.

The difference is in what passes for a beach. Denver has sandy reservoir shores at Cherry Creek and Chatfield, where locals do swim on hot summer days. Around Winter Park, Grand Lake and the Granby reservoirs are for boating and paddling, and the warm water there comes from the hot springs.

Denver gives you far more to eat. Its brewing culture fills RiNo warehouses and the blocks around Coors Field, and the green chile, breakfast burritos, Colorado lamb and bison and the long run of Mexican and Vietnamese kitchens on Federal Boulevard make for a varied week of meals, even if fine dining is thin.

Winter Park feeds hungry skiers and hikers and not much more: burgers, pizza, a few breweries and a handful of steak and elk dinner rooms. On busy winter weekends it pays to book or eat early.

Denver is the only one of the two with real sights. The gold-domed Capitol, the Denver Art Museum with its Native American collection, the Clyfford Still Museum, History Colorado and the brick warehouses of LoDo and Larimer Square fill two or three good days.

Winter Park was built for skiing, and its heritage is the Moffat Tunnel railway story and a small homesteading museum in Fraser. Anyone wanting a museum day from the resort ends up driving to Denver.

Neither place is known for clubbing, but Denver gives you a real night out. LoDo fills on game nights, RiNo has cocktail bars and taprooms, East Colfax has scruffy dive bars and Highland suits a slower drink, with bars open until 2am.

Winter Park's evenings revolve around the lifts. The base village bars are loud at closing time and the pubs along the highway carry on a while, but the crowd skis at first light, so the town goes quiet early.

Both are excellent for the outdoors, and the difference lies in where you sleep. From Denver the mountains are a drive away: Red Rocks and the Golden foothills within half an hour, the Flatirons beyond, Mount Blue Sky and the summits over 4,000m further in. The city adds its own riverside bike trails and a dry, sunny climate.

Winter Park puts you inside the mountains. You can ski from the door, ride one of the country's best-known lift-served bike parks, cross-country ski in the valley, and reach the quieter west side of Rocky Mountain National Park in about an hour. The price is cold nights and summer afternoon storms.

Denver has more within reach, and in more directions. Boulder and Golden are close, Georgetown and Idaho Springs lie up the mountain corridor, Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs are an hour south, and Fort Collins, Estes Park and Breckenridge are possible further out.

Winter Park has fewer choices. Lakeside Grand Lake and the mineral pools of Hot Sulphur Springs are easy drives along the valley. Georgetown, Idaho Springs and Denver itself mean crossing Berthoud Pass, though, and winter storms can close or slow that road, so those trips depend on the weather.

Both work well for children, in different ways. Denver offers the Zoo and the Museum of Nature & Science in City Park, plus the Children's Museum, aquarium and amusement park by the South Platte, so a wet or cold day is easy to fill.

Winter Park is built around a large children's ski school and a compact base where everything is a short walk away, with tubing and sleigh rides in winter and an alpine slide in summer. It has little to do indoors, and the higher altitude and sharp cold need more care with small children.

Both are easy on foot at the centre and need a car beyond it. Denver's downtown is compact and flat, with a free shuttle on the 16th Street Mall and trains to the airport and the suburbs. The mountains, though, mean hiring a car.

In Winter Park a free shuttle links the ski base, town and Fraser, so a ski week can work without driving. Lodgings are spread along the highway, however, and the drive up from Denver crosses Berthoud Pass, which calls for winter tyres in snow.

Denver is where you shop. Cherry Creek has a large upscale mall and streets of boutiques, South Broadway has vintage clothes and records, and the outdoor-gear flagships and Western-wear stores sell boots and hats you will not find at home.

Winter Park's shops are for rentals, tuning, bike parts and forgotten gloves, with a few souvenir stalls in the base village.

Denver is the cheaper of the two, though neither is a bargain. You pay normal American big-city prices there, but staying near the light rail and eating at taquerias and breweries keeps costs down, and the parks and trails are free.

A winter week in Winter Park adds lift tickets, rentals, lessons and resort-priced meals, with few cheap places to eat. To save money, stay in a condo in Fraser with a kitchen, or come in summer, when lodging is cheaper and the trails cost nothing.

Denver has a real performing arts scene. Red Rocks Amphitheatre, set between its sandstone monoliths, is reason enough for a summer evening, and the Denver Center brings theatre, touring musicals, the Colorado Symphony, opera and ballet, with jazz rooms in Five Points.

Winter Park offers free summer concerts in the town park and a band in an après-ski bar the rest of the year. To see a show, you drive back to Denver.

Winter Park is the better place to slow down, mainly because of its setting. Quiet forest, cold clean air, a hot tub at most lodgings and the hillside mineral pools of Hot Sulphur Springs half an hour away make for real rest, especially in the slower weeks of late spring and autumn.

Denver's version is hotel spas, yoga studios and sunny parks. Its nearest natural bathing is the steam caves and mineral pools of Idaho Springs, under an hour into the mountains.