Guadalajara or San Miguel de Allende?

Neither city has a beach, because both sit on the high plateau many hours from the sea. Guadalajara does have the Pacific coast around Puerto Vallarta a short flight away, and its spring-fed balnearios are proper swimming pools. San Miguel's warm springs are more for soaking than for swimming lengths.

Guadalajara's food has far more depth. It is the home of birria, the torta ahogada and carne en su jugo, served at neighbourhood stands and the upstairs stalls of Mercado San Juan de Dios. Jalisco's tequila and cantaritos in clay cups come with the territory.

San Miguel eats well for a small town, with rooftop terraces over the Parroquia, Bajío ingredients such as nopal and mesquite, and local wines on the lists. Much of it is aimed at foreign residents and weekend visitors, though, and after a while the menus start to look alike in a way Guadalajara's regional cooking does not.

Each rewards two or three days, but in different ways. Guadalajara's culture is concentrated in its monuments: the cross of plazas around the cathedral and, above all, Orozco's murals in the Hospicio Cabañas, a sight of real international standing.

In San Miguel the whole town is the attraction, a UNESCO-listed hillside of cobbled streets and ochre façades led by the pink spires of the Parroquia. It has no single masterpiece to match the Cabañas, but its art schools, its galleries and the Siqueiros mural at Bellas Artes give it a lived-in artistic character.

Guadalajara is a university city that goes out late and often. It has mezcal and craft-beer bars around Avenida Chapultepec, one of Mexico's best-known LGBTQ+ scenes, and dressy clubs in Providencia and Zapopan that run into the small hours.

San Miguel's evenings are gentler: a rooftop drink as the Parroquia lights up, then mezcal bars and cantinas near the Jardín. The town livens up when weekenders arrive, but on weeknights it mostly goes quiet after dinner, and there is no real club scene.

Guadalajara has more varied country on its doorstep. There is the oak and pine forest of Bosque La Primavera, with trails and warm streams, and the steep Huentitán canyon down to the Río Santiago. Lake Chapala is good for birdwatching, and the forests around Tapalpa lie further out.

Around San Miguel the land is dry Bajío scrub and cactus. El Charco del Ingenio, riding on the ranches and dawn balloon flights make good mornings, but there are no forests or mountains to fill longer days.

San Miguel is the better base for excursions. Guanajuato's painted ravine, Querétaro's aqueduct and baroque centre, and the murals of Atotonilco are all within about an hour. Dolores Hidalgo, Bernal, Mineral de Pozos and the wine country add more good days than most visitors have time for.

Guadalajara has one outstanding outing, the agave landscape and distilleries of Tequila. It also has easy days at Ajijic on Lake Chapala, the circular Guachimontones pyramids and the mountain villages of Tapalpa and Mazamitla. That is a good choice, but it cannot match San Miguel's cluster of colonial cities nearby.

Guadalajara is far easier with children. The large zoo with Selva Mágica beside it, the Acuario Michin, the hands-on Trompo Mágico and the car-free avenues on Sundays give them real things to do, although these are spread out and you will need taxis.

San Miguel has almost nothing built for children, and its steep cobbles are hard work with a pushchair. Evenings on the Jardín, the hot spring pools and the fiesta fireworks please older children, but younger ones soon run out of things to do.

San Miguel is simpler once you are there, because everything worth seeing lies within a walk of the Jardín. The catch is the effort: steep, uneven cobbles at about 1,900m mean good shoes matter. There is no airport in town, so arrival means a shuttle from Querétaro or León.

Guadalajara's centre and Colonia Americana are good on foot, but the city sprawls along broad avenues that the light rail and Mi Macro buses only partly cover. Most visitors use ride-hailing between districts, which works well, though heavy rush-hour traffic eats into the day.

Both are craft shopping places at heart, with a different emphasis. Guadalajara offers more range: Tlaquepaque's galleries, Tonalá's pottery market, the three floors of Mercado San Juan de Dios, regional leather and boots, and big malls in Zapopan for the brands.

San Miguel is about art and the home. It has tin lanterns and textiles in the Mercado de Artesanías, high-quality décor shops and artists' studios in a former textile mill, but no fashion brands at all.

Guadalajara is cheaper by a clear margin, with street food, ride-hailing and comfortable hotels in the centre and Americana all costing little. Only Providencia and Andares cost noticeably more.

San Miguel is one of the pricier places to visit in Mexico. Boutique hotels in colonial houses and the restaurants around the Jardín are priced for foreign residents, and rooms cost more at weekends and during festivals. Street food, cantinas and churches that are free to visit help travellers who eat and spend away from the centre.

Guadalajara is the home of mariachi, and you hear it at its source in the Plaza de los Mariachis and in El Parián in Tlaquepaque. The Teatro Degollado adds the Jalisco Philharmonic and the university's Ballet Folclórico.

San Miguel has plenty of music for a town its size: mariachi on the Jardín, the Teatro Ángela Peralta, and chamber music and jazz festivals in their seasons. Outside those festivals the formal programme is thin.

Rest takes some planning in Guadalajara and almost none in San Miguel de Allende, which is the clear choice for a restful trip. In the big city, unwinding means a hotel spa or a slow lunch. The thermal pools are out at the edge of La Primavera or along Lake Chapala, so a soak and the traffic either way can take up most of a day.

San Miguel's hot springs are in the valley just outside town. You can take a short taxi ride there and be back before lunch, and the small, unhurried centre is restful in itself. Yoga, temazcal and massage are easy to find because many people live in the town year-round. In Guadalajara, the quieter option is to leave the city and spend a few days in Ajijic.