Laguna Beach or Los Angeles?

Laguna's shoreline is a string of small coves such as Crescent Bay, Shaw's Cove and Victoria Beach, reached down steep stairways. The water is clear over the reefs, so snorkelling is part of an ordinary beach day. Los Angeles has far more shore, from Zuma in Malibu down to the South Bay. Its beaches are more about volleyball, surfing and the bike path than swimming.

The Pacific is cool off both, so neither is a warm-sea destination. Laguna's coves are the better place to actually get in the water. The long Los Angeles sands suit an afternoon of people-watching in Venice or a surf session in a wetsuit.

Laguna Beach eats like a well-off beach town: fish tacos, poke, local seafood and California wine, often with the sunset doing much of the work. The range is narrow and there is no market life, so visitors who want variety drive inland to Orange County's Vietnamese and Korean kitchens.

Los Angeles is a reason in itself to make the trip. Koreatown barbecue, San Gabriel Valley Chinese cooking, Eastside taco stands and Thai Town each cook at full strength, and Grand Central Market is an easy place to start. You will drive between them, but what you find is far deeper than anything in Laguna.

Laguna's culture comes from its art-colony past. The Laguna Art Museum's California collection and the galleries along Coast Highway and Forest Avenue fill a pleasant morning. The nearest serious historic sight, Mission San Juan Capistrano, is outside town.

Los Angeles has a real museum circuit: the Getty Center on its hilltop, LACMA and the Broad, the Huntington's library and gardens, and Griffith Observatory. Hollywood and the Art Deco downtown are landmarks of their own. There is no old historic core and every day of sightseeing involves driving, but there is a week's worth to see.

In Laguna, a night out means a drink after dinner at an old beach bar, a wine bar or a hotel terrace, and the village is quiet before midnight. Los Angeles has velvet-rope clubs in Hollywood, the gay strip on Santa Monica Boulevard, rooftop bars downtown and dive bars in Echo Park, though bars close at 2am and a night tends to stay in one neighbourhood. Laguna visitors who want more drive up to Newport Beach, or into Los Angeles itself.

Both sit beside protected wild country. Laguna's strength is the sea. Its whole coast is a marine protected area, so tide pooling, shore diving over kelp and kayaking start from the beach. The chaparral trails of Laguna Coast Wilderness Park and Aliso and Wood Canyons rise straight behind town.

Los Angeles has more range. Griffith Park and the Santa Monica Mountains offer hiking inside the city, and the San Gabriel Mountains climb above 3,000m to pine forest and winter snow at Mount Baldy. Boats also run out to the Channel Islands. The catch is the traffic you sit in to reach it all.

Laguna sits in the handier spot. Mission San Juan Capistrano is about twenty minutes inland, the Catalina ferry leaves from nearby Dana Point, and Temecula's vineyards and San Diego's Old Town and Balboa Park both make good outings by car. Los Angeles is a similar distance to the north, though traffic can stretch that drive well beyond the hour and a half.

From Los Angeles, the pick is Santa Barbara, with its mission and red-tile streets, and Ojai in its orange-grove valley, both well out of easy reach from Laguna. Most other trips start with a long crawl out of the basin, where a two-hour drive at dawn can take three by afternoon.

Laguna is a beach-day town for children. It has lifeguarded sand, tide pools full of crabs and anemones, the Main Beach playground and easy snorkelling. The steep stairways down to many coves and the cost of family rooms are real drawbacks, and Disneyland is a forty-minute drive.

Los Angeles can fill a far longer stay. Universal Studios, Six Flags Magic Mountain, the space shuttle at the California Science Center, the La Brea Tar Pits and the Aquarium of the Pacific are all on top of the Anaheim parks. Every outing means a drive, so families do best sticking to one area a day.

You need a car in both, but Laguna is easier to manage. The village is compact enough to walk, and a free trolley runs along Coast Highway between the beaches, so once you have parked, a beach day works on foot. The trouble is summer parking and the stairs down to the coves.

Los Angeles has Metro lines linking downtown, Hollywood, Pasadena and Santa Monica. Even so, the sights are spread across a basin of separate cities and the freeways between them jam, so hours go on travel in a way they don't in Laguna.

Laguna's shopping means art and small boutiques: plein air paintings and glass in the galleries, beachwear and jewellery on Forest Avenue, and handmade crafts at the summer art festivals. Los Angeles has the full range, from the luxury houses of Rodeo Drive to Melrose streetwear, Abbot Kinney's independent shops and vintage hunting at the Rose Bowl flea market. Laguna's own shoppers drive to Newport Beach and Costa Mesa when they want the big labels.

Neither is a budget trip, but Laguna is harder on the wallet. Clifftop resorts, plain motels and ocean-view dinners are all priced for the setting. The free beaches, trails and trolley are the main relief, and many budget visitors sleep elsewhere and come for the day.

Los Angeles is expensive for hotels, car hire and parking. Still, you can eat very well for little at taco trucks and in Koreatown and the San Gabriel Valley, and the Getty's collections and Griffith Observatory are free. Over a week, that cheap food makes the real difference.

Laguna's great event is the Pageant of the Masters, a summer tradition since the 1930s in which live performers recreate famous paintings in a canyon amphitheatre. The Laguna Playhouse keeps theatre going all year. It makes a charming evening, but the programme is narrow.

Los Angeles is a major music city. The Philharmonic plays at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and moves to the Hollywood Bowl in summer, LA Opera performs at the Music Center, Broadway tours play the Pantages, and bands play nightly on the Sunset Strip and in Echo Park. On top of that come the Hollywood comedy and improv clubs and the jazz of Leimert Park.

Laguna's calm is its own kind of rest: an unhurried pace, clifftop walks, long sunsets and ocean-view spas in the resorts on the bluffs. There is no bathing tradition, though, and most treatments come at resort prices.

For actual bathing and treatments, Los Angeles offers more. Koreatown's bathhouses have hot and cold pools, scrubs and heated floors, open late or around the clock, with yoga studios and Beverly Hills spas on top. The city itself is far from restful, which is why locals escape to Ojai or the desert spas around Palm Springs.