Laguna Beach or San Francisco?

This is where Laguna Beach is strongest. Its string of coves, from Crescent Bay and Shaw's Cove to Thousand Steps and the wide sand at Aliso, has clear water over reefs and lifeguarded stretches near Main Beach. By late summer the sea is pleasant for a long swim.

San Francisco's shore is beautiful in a different way. Ocean Beach and Baker Beach are for walks, bonfires and views of the Golden Gate Bridge. Fog and rip currents are common, and the water is cold enough that the few swimmers in Aquatic Park wear wetsuits.

Food is one of the biggest differences between these two. San Francisco has dishes of its own: sourdough, cioppino and the Mission burrito. It also has deep Cantonese cooking in Chinatown and the Richmond, Italian bakeries in North Beach, and the Ferry Building market for a morning of tasting.

Laguna Beach eats well within narrow limits. Expect fish tacos, poke, surfers' breakfasts and a few seafood kitchens where the sunset view does much of the work. For more range, visitors drive inland to Orange County's Vietnamese and Korean restaurants.

San Francisco gives you several days of sightseeing. There is Alcatraz, the cable cars on Nob Hill, the Victorians around Alamo Square, and museums such as SFMOMA, the de Young and the Asian Art Museum. Chinatown and the Castro add histories of their own.

Laguna Beach's culture is its past as an art colony, which you can see in the Laguna Art Museum and the galleries along Coast Highway. A morning covers it. For older history you drive inland to the mission at San Juan Capistrano.

An evening out in Laguna Beach means a drink after dinner in a beach bar or a hotel lounge above the water, and the village is quiet well before midnight. San Francisco offers a real night out, with mezcal and cocktail bars in the Mission, old saloons in North Beach, the Castro's gay bars and warehouse clubs in SoMa, though the bars all stop serving at 2am.

Both sit in fine coastal country, and San Francisco has the edge for the variety of landscape within reach. From the city you can get to the Lands End cliffs, the Marin Headlands, the redwoods of Muir Woods and the elephant seals of Point Reyes. Cycling across the bridge is a classic outing.

Laguna Beach's nature centres on the sea. Its whole coast is a marine protected area, used for tide pooling, kayaking and shore diving over kelp, and dolphins are common offshore. Behind the town, Aliso and Wood Canyons and the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park have trails through chaparral.

Both have strong day trips, of different kinds. From Laguna Beach the outings are Southern California classics: the mission at San Juan Capistrano, the ferry to Catalina, San Diego's Balboa Park or the vineyards of Temecula. Nearly all of them need a car.

San Francisco's great day out is the Napa and Sonoma wine country. Sausalito is a ferry ride away and Berkeley a short train ride, and Monterey's aquarium and Carmel make a longer trip south. More of these can be done without driving.

With children, the choice is between beach days and museum days. Laguna Beach keeps them on the shore, with tide pools full of crabs and anemones, lifeguarded beaches and easy snorkelling, and Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm are about forty minutes away. The catch is the long, steep stairways down to many coves and the cost of family-sized rooms.

San Francisco fills the days with museums and parks instead: the hands-on Exploratorium, the aquarium and planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences, and the carousel and paddle boats in Golden Gate Park, plus the sea lions at Fisherman's Wharf. The region has no major theme-park resort to match Disneyland, and the hills are hard work with a pushchair.

San Francisco is far easier to get around. The city is compact, and one card covers BART, Muni, the cable cars and the bay ferries, so you need a car only for wine country. The steep hills do make short walks harder than they look on the map.

In Laguna Beach, the village and the free trolley along the coast cover only a small area. Beyond them there is no train and the buses are slow, so you need a car, and summer parking is a daily struggle.

San Francisco offers more choice. Union Square has the department stores and flagship brands, while Hayes Valley, Valencia Street and Haight-Ashbury add independent labels, bookshops and vintage clothing.

Laguna Beach's shopping is narrower and more particular. You can buy original paintings and glass from its galleries, crafts straight from the makers at the summer art festivals, and beachwear on Forest Avenue. For luxury labels you drive to the malls in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa.

Neither is a budget destination, and in both the money goes on rooms and restaurant meals. In Laguna Beach, the clifftop resorts, ocean-view dining and paid parking push costs up, and many budget travellers sleep inland and come for the day.

San Francisco is just as hard on the wallet, but there are more ways to soften it. You can eat at Mission taquerias and Chinatown dim sum places, use the cheap public transport, and spend days in the free parks and on the bridge walk, all without paying for a hire car.

San Francisco has a full year of performance. There is opera and ballet at the War Memorial Opera House, the symphony at Davies Symphony Hall, drama at the American Conservatory Theater, jazz at the SFJAZZ Center and rock at the Fillmore.

Laguna Beach has one memorable summer evening, the Pageant of the Masters, where live performers recreate famous artworks as tableaux in a canyon amphitheatre. The long-running Laguna Playhouse stages plays and musicals, but for opera or a symphony concert you drive to Costa Mesa.

There is little between them here, and neither has a bathing tradition, but the calm feels different. Laguna Beach is slow by nature, with clifftop walks, sunsets and resort spas looking over the ocean. San Francisco is busier, so you go looking for quiet in the Japantown bathhouse or the Japanese Tea Garden, or drive two hours to the mud baths of Calistoga.