Laguna Beach or Park City?

This is where the two are furthest apart. Laguna Beach is a chain of small beaches and rocky coves, from Main Beach in the village to Crescent Bay, Thousand Steps and the wide sand at Aliso, with clear water and reefs to snorkel. The Pacific stays cool for much of the year, and the stairways down to many coves are long.

Park City has no coast at all. In high summer you can swim at Jordanelle Reservoir down the valley, but most visitors' time in the water is spent in a hotel pool or hot tub.

The two eat about equally well, and both are limited in range. What changes is the setting. In Laguna, meals revolve around seafood, fish tacos and California wine in cliffside dining rooms where you pay for the view. Park City cooks mountain fare such as elk, bison and trout along Main Street, and après-ski drinks on slopeside decks are a ritual of their own.

For more variety, Laguna diners drive inland to Orange County's Vietnamese, Mexican and Korean restaurants. Park City diners head down the canyon to Salt Lake City.

Laguna Beach has a little more to see, thanks to its art-colony past. The Laguna Art Museum focuses on California painting, and galleries line Coast Highway and Forest Avenue. Park City's story is silver mining, told in the Park City Museum and visible in the old headframes on the slopes, along with the Olympic museums at the Utah Olympic Park.

Neither town needs more than a morning or an afternoon for its sights. Laguna also has the mission at San Juan Capistrano close by.

Park City has the more lively evenings, though only in season. On winter weekends the saloons and cocktail bars on Main Street fill up after the lifts close, and a few have DJs or bands. It can get rowdy at the peak of ski season, then goes quiet in summer.

Laguna Beach is a drink after dinner in a beach bar or a hotel lounge above the ocean, and the town is asleep before midnight. A real night out means driving to Newport Beach or further.

Both are strong outdoor bases, but Park City is the bigger one. It sits at about 2,100m in the Wasatch, with two major ski areas reached from the streets and Alta, Snowbird, Brighton and Solitude over the ridge. In summer the singletrack, lift-served biking and fly fishing on the Provo make it just as busy.

Laguna's appeal is the meeting of hills and sea. There are canyon trails in Laguna Coast Wilderness Park and Aliso and Wood Canyons, and a protected coastline for tide pooling, kayaking and shore diving. Dolphins are common offshore, and grey whales pass in winter.

Laguna Beach has much more within reach. Mission San Juan Capistrano is about twenty minutes away, ferries cross to Catalina Island, and San Diego and Los Angeles each make a full day out. Temecula's vineyards are about an hour inland.

From Park City, the main outing is Salt Lake City, with Temple Square and the Capitol. The Heber Valley steam railway, Swiss-style Midway and Ogden's railroad-era street come next, and after that the options are mostly scenery.

Both work well with children, in different ways. Laguna is about the shore: tide pools full of crabs, lifeguarded beaches and easy snorkelling, with Disneyland about forty minutes away. The steep beach stairways and scarce summer parking are the main hassles.

Park City offers ski schools with gentle learning areas, and in summer the alpine coaster and ziplines at the Olympic Park and alpine slides at the resort bases. Free buses take children to the slopes without a car. The altitude can tire young children for the first day or so.

Park City is far easier once you arrive. Free buses link Old Town, both ski bases and Kimball Junction, and many hotels run their own shuttles, so a car can stay parked all week.

In Laguna Beach, only the village centre is walkable and the free trolley follows Coast Highway. Anything else means a car, in a long, hilly town where parking fills early on summer weekends. Neither place has rail.

Laguna Beach is the better place to browse, mostly for art. The North Laguna gallery row sells plein air landscapes and glass, Forest Avenue has jewellery and beachwear, and the summer festivals sell crafts directly from the makers. Newport Beach's luxury malls are about half an hour away.

Park City offers resort shopping: Western wear, cowboy boots, ski fashion and outdoor gear on Main Street, plus outlets at Kimball Junction.

Both are among the costliest resort towns in the United States. In Laguna Beach, prices peak on summer weekends, when clifftop rooms, ocean-view dinners and parking add up fast. The beaches, trails and trolley are free, though.

In Park City, the expense is in winter, with lift tickets and ski school on top of slopeside lodging, and the Christmas weeks are the steepest. Summer and autumn there are noticeably cheaper. In both places, budget travellers stay elsewhere and visit for the day.

Laguna Beach offers more, thanks to the Pageant of the Masters. Each summer evening since the 1930s, live performers have recreated famous paintings as tableaux in a canyon amphitheatre, with an orchestra. The Laguna Playhouse runs plays all year, and Costa Mesa's large arts centre is half an hour away.

Park City has the 1920s Egyptian Theatre on Main Street and summer concerts by the Utah Symphony on the lawns at Deer Valley. Outside summer there is little on.

Rest comes in different forms in each. Laguna's calm comes from slow mornings, clifftop walks, yoga studios and sunsets over the Pacific, with the full spas in the bluff-top resorts.

Park City has a slight edge in the water itself. The ski-lodge spas focus on sore legs, outdoor hot tubs sit under the snow, and at nearby Midway you can swim in the warm geothermal water of the Homestead Crater, which Laguna has nothing to match.