Laguna Beach or Las Vegas?

Laguna Beach is a real beach town, strung along coves such as Crescent Bay, Shaw's Cove and Victoria Beach, with the broad sand at Aliso and the boardwalk at Main Beach. The water is clear enough for snorkelling over reefs, but it is the cool Pacific, and you'll often reach the sand down long stairways.

Las Vegas has no sea at all. Its swimming means resort pools with wave machines and lazy rivers, or a drive of about 40 minutes to the treeless gravel shore of Lake Mead. Good for cooling off, but not a reason to choose it over the coast.

Las Vegas offers far more choice. Restaurants run by famous chefs, steakhouses and tasting menus fill the Strip, and Spring Mountain Road runs for kilometres with Sichuan, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese kitchens, many open late.

Laguna Beach eats well but narrowly, with fish tacos, poke, surfers' breakfasts and seafood dining rooms where the clifftop sunset is part of what you pay for. For the variety that comes easily in Las Vegas, people here drive inland to the Vietnamese and Korean restaurants of Orange County.

Neither town is a place for serious sightseeing, and in both you'll see the main sights in a morning or an evening. Laguna's culture comes from its art colony: plein air painting at the Laguna Art Museum, galleries along Coast Highway and craftsman cottages. Las Vegas offers spectacle instead, with themed resorts, the fountains and the Fremont Street light canopy, plus two museums worth seeing, the Neon Museum's sign yard and the Mob Museum in the old courthouse.

This is the biggest gap between the two. Las Vegas never stops: superstar DJs play resort clubs, pool parties run in the daytime, and the Strip is still crowded at three in the morning. Downtown around Fremont Street and the arts district has cheaper dive bars and craft beer for something looser.

In Laguna Beach, a night out means a few beach bars, wine bars and hotel terraces, and the village is quiet before midnight. For a club or a late night you'll have to drive to Newport Beach or Costa Mesa.

Both are excellent bases for the outdoors, but in very different landscapes. Laguna Beach combines sea and hills: a marine protected area for tide pooling, kayaking and shore diving, dolphins offshore and winter grey whales from Dana Point, with chaparral trails in Laguna Coast Wilderness Park and Crystal Cove behind.

Las Vegas has desert rock instead. There is sandstone climbing at Red Rock Canyon, petroglyphs at Valley of Fire and pine forest on Mount Charleston. The difference is the season: the Laguna coast stays usable all year, while the desert is only safe to hike outside the summer months.

From Laguna Beach the day trips are many and varied: Mission San Juan Capistrano twenty minutes inland, the ferry to Catalina, the Temecula vineyards, and San Diego or Los Angeles within a long drive.

Las Vegas has Hoover Dam and Boulder City, then a long gap. The Grand Canyon, Zion and Death Valley are long journeys to see landscapes, not quick outings.

Laguna Beach is much the better place for children. There are lifeguarded beaches, tide pools of anemones and crabs, easy snorkelling and a calm village, and Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm are within an hour. The drawbacks are steep beach stairs and expensive family rooms.

In Las Vegas, families have to pass through casino floors to get almost anywhere, and summer makes walking hard. The aquarium, indoor rides and the children's museum fill a day or two, which is why most families treat it as a stop on a road trip.

Neither is easy without a car, but the problems differ. In Laguna Beach the compact village and the free coastal trolley cover the beaches, but there is no train, and the airports and theme parks mean freeway driving and a hunt for parking.

Las Vegas packs most of what visitors want into the Strip, with a monorail, buses running day and night, and plenty of taxis. Its distances are deceptive, though: resorts that look close can be far apart on foot through heat and casino interiors, and the desert sights still need a hire car.

For brands and choice, Las Vegas is ahead. The resort arcades at Caesars Palace and the Venetian, the Fashion Show mall and two outlet centres hold most of the big fashion houses and stay open late.

Laguna Beach is better for something you could only buy there: plein air paintings and glass from the gallery row, beachwear and jewellery on Forest Avenue, and handmade crafts at the summer art festivals. Its serious fashion lies half an hour away in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa.

Neither is cheap, but Las Vegas leaves more room to save. Sunday to Thursday its rooms can be good value, especially downtown, and meals in Chinatown cost far less than on the Strip. Weekends, conventions and resort fees push prices up quickly.

Laguna Beach is expensive whenever you go, from clifftop resorts and simple motels to ocean-view meals and parking. The beaches, trails and trolley are free, and many budget travellers sleep inland and visit for the day.

Las Vegas is the stronger choice for shows. On any night there are dozens of permanent productions, from water-based acrobatics to magicians and comedians, alongside residencies by stars who rarely tour, and the Smith Center for Broadway tours and ballet.

Laguna Beach has one unusual tradition, the summer Pageant of the Masters, in which live performers recreate famous paintings in a canyon amphitheatre. The Laguna Playhouse stages plays all year, but opera and symphony mean a drive to Costa Mesa.

Laguna Beach is slightly the better place to relax, because the whole town moves slowly: clifftop walks, yoga studios, sunsets over the water and resort spas with sea views.

Las Vegas has larger spas, with thermal circuits, saunas and salt rooms open to non-guests. Outside them, though, the casinos are noisy around the clock, so rest takes planning: stay in a non-gaming hotel and book spa time early in the morning.