Las Vegas or Winter Park, Colorado?

Neither city has a beach or a sea to swim in. Las Vegas at least offers Boulder Beach on Lake Mead, a gravel shore with warm summer water, and resort pools with sand-lined wave pools and lazy rivers for a hot afternoon. Winter Park's lakes at Grand Lake and Granby stay cold with snowmelt and suit paddling more than swimming, so time in the water there means a hot tub or the hot springs down the valley.

Las Vegas is in another league for eating. The Strip resorts gather steakhouses, French dining rooms, famous chefs' outposts and the old-style buffets. The best reason to leave the resorts is Spring Mountain Road, where kilometres of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese restaurants stay open late.

Winter Park feeds a ski or bike trip and little more. Expect burgers and green chile at the lodges, pizza and barbecue on the highway, a couple of breweries and a few steak, elk and trout dinner rooms. Neither place has a cuisine of its own, but only in Las Vegas does dinner become a reason for the trip.

Neither is a sightseeing destination, but Las Vegas gives you more for an evening or two. There are the themed resorts and dancing fountains of the Strip and the light show over Fremont Street. Downtown has two museums worth a visit: the Neon Museum's yard of old casino signs and the Mob Museum in the former federal courthouse.

Winter Park has almost nothing to see beyond the railway story of the Moffat Tunnel and a small homesteading museum in Fraser. A proper museum day from there means driving to Denver.

This is the widest gap between the two. Las Vegas is built for going out: drinks you can carry along the Strip, DJ residencies in the resort clubs, pool parties by day, and Fremont Street and the arts district for cheaper dive bars and cocktail lounges. On a weekend the Strip is still busy at three in the morning.

Winter Park's nightlife is après-ski. The base village bars are loud when the lifts close, then a few pubs and taprooms on the main road carry on for a while. By late evening the skiers have gone to bed before first chair, and there are no clubs at all.

Both put serious landscape within reach, but Winter Park lives inside it. Two connected ski mountains, Mary Jane's bumps and tree runs, cross-country track in the valley and backcountry on Berthoud Pass fill the winter. Summer brings a lift-served bike park, forest singletrack and the moose and high tundra of Rocky Mountain National Park.

The desert around Las Vegas is spectacular too, with the sandstone cliffs and climbing of Red Rock Canyon, the flame-coloured rock of Valley of Fire and the pine forests of Mount Charleston. Each needs a drive, though, and the summer heat cuts hiking back to the cooler months.

Winter Park has more places to go. Over Berthoud Pass, Georgetown and Idaho Springs have Victorian main streets and a narrow-gauge railway loop. The Grand Lake boardwalk and the pools of Hot Sulphur Springs lie the other way, and Denver's museums are within reach when the pass is clear. Winter storms can close or slow those roads.

From Las Vegas there is really one outing to a place rather than a landscape: Hoover Dam with Boulder City, the town built for its workers. The Grand Canyon, Zion and Death Valley trips are long drives to scenery.

Winter Park is much the better family base. It is known for its large children's ski school and gentle learning slopes, and the village is small enough to walk from lodging to lift. Tubing, skating and sleigh rides fill winter afternoons, and an alpine slide and easy bike trails fill summer ones. The cautions are altitude headaches for the first night or two and the lack of indoor options on wet days.

Las Vegas can manage a day or two of aquarium, roller coasters and fountains. Still, children have to cross casino floors to get anywhere, and summer heat makes walking hard work with small children.

Getting around is a similar mixed bag in both, for different reasons. In Las Vegas the Strip looks walkable, but the vast resorts, footbridges and casino detours stretch every walk. The monorail and all-night buses help, though most visitors fall back on taxis and ride-hailing.

Winter Park has a free shuttle linking the ski base, town and Fraser, so a ski week works without driving. Lodgings are spread along the highway, however, and trailheads and the national park need a car. In both places the outdoors means hiring a car, and in Winter Park that means a mountain pass that calls for winter tyres in snow.

Las Vegas is a real shopping trip, all of it indoors. The Caesars Palace arcade, the Venetian's canal-side shops and the central luxury mall hold the big fashion and jewellery houses, Fashion Show adds department stores, and two outlet centres cater to bargain hunters. What is missing is anything local or handmade.

Winter Park's shops sell ski tuning, bike parts and fleeces. They are handy if you forgot your goggles, but anything more means a drive to Denver.

Las Vegas is the easier of the two to keep in check, as long as you choose your nights. Midweek rooms on and near the Strip can be good value, downtown is cheaper still, and eating in Chinatown costs far less than eating on the Strip. Weekends, conventions, resort fees and nights out push the bill up fast.

A Winter Park ski week is expensive almost everywhere, with lift tickets, rentals, lessons and resort-priced meals, and few cheap places to eat. Condo kitchens and Fraser motels help. Summer, when the trails are free and lodging rates fall, is the only time it is easy on the budget.

Shows are one of the main reasons to go to Las Vegas. Permanent theatres host water-based acrobatics, aerial spectacles, magicians and comedians every night, star singers take long residencies, and the Smith Center brings touring musicals, the Philharmonic and ballet downtown.

Winter Park offers free summer concerts in the town park against a mountain backdrop, and a band in an après-ski bar the rest of the year. There is no theatre or concert hall, so a real evening of performance means Denver.

The two are fairly close here, but the rest they offer is quite different. Las Vegas has huge resort spas with thermal circuits, salt and ice rooms and long treatment menus. You walk out of them into casinos that never dim, so weekday mornings and non-gaming hotels are the way to unwind.

In Winter Park the calm comes from the place itself: cold air, quiet forest and a hot tub after a day outdoors. Hot Sulphur Springs is half an hour away, with mineral pools stepping down above the Colorado River, and the slower weeks of late spring and autumn are the most restful.