Las Vegas or Tijuana?

Neither city is a beach destination, but only Tijuana is on the sea at all. Playas de Tijuana gives you real Pacific sand, a promenade and a seafood lunch beside the border fence, and Rosarito, half an hour south, has wide beaches and beach bars. The water is cool, though, and near the city it is often too polluted to swim in.

Las Vegas has no coast, only resort pools with wave machines and lazy rivers, and the gravel shore of Lake Mead in a shadeless desert basin. In summer the pools are warmer and easier to enjoy, but they are a hotel amenity rather than a day at the beach.

Tijuana has the better food, and it is its own: adobada and birria tacos, ceviche and sea urchin tostadas from the carts, Baja Med cooking in Zona Río and Chapultepec, and local craft beer and Valle de Guadalupe wine to go with it. This is also the city where the Caesar salad was invented.

Las Vegas eats well on borrowed talent. Famous chefs' outposts, steakhouses and tasting menus fill the Strip, and the long Spring Mountain Road Chinatown offers a range of Asian cooking that Tijuana cannot match. What it lacks is a local cuisine, and most meals come at resort prices.

Both are young cities that are thin on heritage, but Tijuana gives slightly more sense of place. The Museo de las Californias tells the story of the peninsula, Avenida Revolución keeps its Prohibition-era look, and the mural-covered border fence at the beach makes the frontier real in a way no museum could.

Las Vegas is better as a spectacle: themed resorts, the fountains and the light canopy over Fremont Street. For actual history there is little beyond the Neon Museum's sign yard and the Mob Museum in the old courthouse.

Las Vegas is in another league for going out. Casino bars never shut, the resort nightclubs bring in headline DJs, and dayclub pool parties run before them, so the Strip is still busy at three in the morning. Expect dress codes, queues and table service. Downtown's Fremont Street and the arts district are looser and cheaper.

Tijuana's nights are smaller and more local. Calle Sexta's cantinas and dance spots draw young Tijuanenses, Zona Río and Colonia Cacho have taprooms and cocktail bars, and Revolución does loud, cheap drinking for visitors. Stick to these areas and take a ride-hail home.

Las Vegas has much more on its doorstep. Red Rock Canyon is half an hour away with trails and top-class climbing, Valley of Fire has flame-coloured rock and petroglyphs, and Mount Charleston offers cool forest in summer and a little skiing in winter. You need a car, and summer heat restricts desert hiking to dawn.

Tijuana itself is dry hills and scrubby canyons. Its outdoors lies along the coast: the cliff road to Ensenada, surf breaks near Rosarito, winter whale-watching and gentle walks in the vineyards. Proper mountains are too far for a day.

Tijuana is the better base, with options in two countries. Rosarito and the lobster village of Puerto Nuevo are close, Ensenada and the Valle de Guadalupe wineries make full days out, and San Diego's Balboa Park and La Jolla are just across the border. Remember that coming back into the United States can take hours.

Las Vegas has Hoover Dam and Boulder City for a solid half day. After that, the Grand Canyon, Zion and Death Valley are long drives to great landscapes, not a choice of towns.

Neither city is built around children, but they fall short in different ways. Las Vegas has more ready-made entertainment, including an indoor amusement park, a shark aquarium, the Discovery Children's Museum and thrill rides on the tower. To reach almost any of it you walk through casino floors and past adult advertising.

In Tijuana the content is lighter: El Trompo science museum, the IMAX dome and a day on the sand at Rosarito. Restaurants welcome children warmly, but you need a car for the distances and the pavements are patchy.

Las Vegas is a little easier, because nearly everything a visitor wants lies along the Strip, with downtown's Fremont Street a few kilometres north. Buses run the length of the Strip day and night and carry on downtown, and a monorail runs behind the resorts on the east side of the Strip. The catch is scale. The resorts are so big that a neighbour can be twenty minutes away on foot, by footbridges and through casinos, and in summer the heat makes those walks punishing.

Tijuana has a walkable core next to the San Ysidro crossing. Beyond it the city sprawls over the hills with no metro and bus routes that are hard for a visitor to read, so most people use ride-hailing and yellow taxis. Traffic near the border is heavy, and in both cities a car is the practical way to reach the countryside.

Las Vegas is a far bigger shopping destination, in a polished indoor way. The Caesars Palace arcade, the luxury mall at the centre of the Strip and the Venetian's canal shops hold the major fashion houses, and two outlet centres draw bargain hunters. There is almost nothing local.

Tijuana offers the opposite: curio markets for silver, leather and pottery, spices and vanilla at Mercado Hidalgo, and galleries and record shops in Pasaje Rodríguez. Many visitors from the north come for the pharmacies, but you won't find much fashion.

Tijuana is much cheaper. Street food costs very little, mid-range hotels are good value and taxis are inexpensive. Only the Revolución bars, the smarter Baja Med dining rooms and the wine-country tastings approach international prices.

Las Vegas can be reasonable if you stay midweek and eat in Chinatown. At weekends room rates multiply, resort fees are added to almost every booking, and shows, clubs and Strip dining are expensive by American standards.

Live entertainment is one of the main reasons to choose Las Vegas. Permanent theatres stage water acrobatics, aerial shows, magic and comedy every night, and big pop and country stars play residencies you may not see on tour. The Smith Center adds touring Broadway shows and the philharmonic.

Tijuana's scene is modest and local. The Baja California orchestra plays at the Centro Cultural, a long-standing opera company gives a yearly open-air performance, and there are mariachis at Plaza Santa Cecilia and small Nortec and rock gigs around Calle Sexta.

Las Vegas is the better place to unwind, though only within its resorts. The huge hotel spas offer thermal circuits, saunas and salt rooms with day passes, and a weekday morning there followed by an afternoon at the pool can be genuinely restful. The constant stimulation of the casinos is what you have to avoid.

Tijuana offers little for relaxation beyond hotel spas and cheap massage studios in Zona Río. Its health trade is medical and dental, and the real calm is out in the vineyard estates of the Valle de Guadalupe.