Juneau or Vancouver?

Neither city is a swimming destination, but Vancouver at least has a beach life. Its sandy bays at English Bay, Kitsilano and Spanish Banks fill with picnics and volleyball on warm summer days, and the outdoor saltwater pool at Kitsilano gives a proper swim.

Juneau's shore is gravel, rock and tidal flats. Sandy Beach and Eagle Beach are for a fire, a walk or watching eagles at low tide, not for sunbathing.

Both cities eat well on the same Pacific seafood: salmon, spot prawns and Dungeness crab. In Juneau, though, that is most of the story. Fish-and-chips shacks, salmon bakes and a handful of downtown restaurants are covered in a few days, and some of them close in winter.

Vancouver adds a much wider range around that seafood. Cantonese dim sum, Korean barbecue, ramen and Taiwanese snacks sit beside the stalls of Granville Island market and the bakeries and breweries of Commercial Drive. You could eat differently every night for a week.

Both cities centre their sights on Northwest Coast Indigenous art. Vancouver's Museum of Anthropology, with its hall of totem poles and canoes, is the stronger single visit, and Gastown, the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Garden and Emily Carr's paintings add some variety.

Juneau's sights are fewer and more local: the State Museum, the Tlingit and Haida art of the Walter Soboleff Building, the onion-domed Russian church and the old Treadwell mine ruins. They make a good day, but not more than that.

Juneau's evenings mean a beer in a sawdust-floored saloon on South Franklin Street, and the town is quiet well before late. Vancouver is no party city either, but it gives you real choices: Gastown cocktail bars, brewery taprooms around Main Street, summer patios, the Granville Street clubs at weekends and the gay bars of Davie Village.

Nature is the main reason to visit either city, and Vancouver offers more range and easier access. Three mountains with summer trails and winter skiing rise half an hour from downtown, and the city also has the Stanley Park seawall, rainforest canyons and the Sea-to-Sky drive to Squamish and Whistler.

Juneau's appeal is narrower but more extreme. It has a tidewater fjord, an icefield you can land on, and humpbacks and bears as a normal part of a summer day. The price is far more rain and a much shorter season.

From Juneau, the outings are into ice and water, because other towns are a flight or a ferry away. Skagway and Haines can be done, but they take some planning. Vancouver has a longer list of places you can reach by road or ferry. Victoria's harbour and Parliament Buildings make a full day out, and Steveston, Fort Langley, Bowen Island and Whistler village are easier half-day or day trips.

Juneau suits school-age children who can manage long boat trips and glacier walks, and the Macaulay hatchery touch tanks and the Mount Roberts tram are easy wins. There is little for younger children or for rainy days.

Vancouver is easier at any age. The aquarium, the miniature train and the water park are all inside Stanley Park, and Science World is central for a wet day. The canyon suspension bridges and the Grouse gondola add some excitement, although these North Shore attractions are pricey for a family.

Juneau's steep little downtown is walkable, but the glacier and Auke Bay lie along a single road, and the bus stops short of the glacier. Most visitors end up on tour shuttles or in a hire car.

Vancouver needs no car at all. The SkyTrain runs in from the airport, the SeaBus crosses to North Vancouver, one card covers the whole network, and the seawall makes cycling the nicest way to link the central neighbourhoods.

Juneau's shopping is mostly cruise-season jewellery and fur stores. The things worth buying are Tlingit and Haida carving from the Sealaska Heritage shop and a few galleries, plus smoked salmon. Vancouver has the same Indigenous art and much more besides: chains on Robson Street, luxury houses on Alberni Street, studios on Granville Island, vintage shops on Main Street and the Asian malls of Richmond.

Neither city is cheap, but Juneau costs more. Food is shipped or flown in, hotels are few, and the whale trips, helicopter landings and floatplane flights you come for add up quickly.

Vancouver's hotels are expensive too, but day-to-day costs are easier to control. Noodle shops and casual sushi keep meals cheap, and the seawall, Stanley Park and the beaches cost nothing.

Juneau's arts calendar mostly runs in the off-season: the theatre in Douglas, the winter symphony and the spring Folk Festival. Summer visitors mostly get Native dance performances. Vancouver has symphony, opera and ballet through the year, and in summer it adds Bard on the Beach in Vanier Park, the Fringe and the folk festival on Jericho Beach.

Neither city has a bathing tradition. Juneau offers a few small day spas and quiet rainforest walks, and its downtown is anything but calm on busy ship days. Vancouver is better for slowing down. It has good hotel spas, many yoga studios and massage places in Richmond, and a gentle walk on the seawall is never far away.