Los Angeles or New York?

Los Angeles has far more shore to choose from. It runs for over 100km, from the Malibu coves through Santa Monica and Venice to the South Bay, and the beach is part of daily life, with volleyball, the bike path and surf breaks. New York's beaches at Coney Island, Brighton Beach and the Rockaways are real, but they sit at the ends of subway lines and are a change of scene rather than a way of life.

The water is a closer contest. In August the Atlantic off New York gets slightly warmer than the Pacific, but only for a short summer. Los Angeles beaches are pleasant for walking and surfing for much of the year, even when the sea calls for a wetsuit.

Both are cities of immigrant cooking, and both reward eaters who leave the centre. Los Angeles is strongest on street tacos, Koreatown barbecue and the regional Chinese cooking of the San Gabriel Valley, with California produce all year. The best of it is spread out, though, and you will drive between meals.

New York goes wider and deeper. Flushing, Jackson Heights, Greenpoint and Arthur Avenue between them cover more of the world, and its fine dining is among the deepest anywhere. Its own classics, pizza by the slice, bagels and deli pastrami, are on nearly every block and a short subway ride apart.

Los Angeles has a good modern circuit in the Getty Center, LACMA, the Broad and the Huntington, with Hollywood and the Disney Concert Hall for film and architecture fans. It has no old core, though, and seeing it all means long drives between hilltops and neighbourhoods.

New York is the stronger cultural trip by a wide margin. The Met, MoMA, the Natural History Museum and Museum Mile hold collections of world rank a few subway stops apart. Landmarks from the Statue of Liberty to Grand Central, and the brownstones of Brooklyn, make the streets themselves a sight.

Evenings in Los Angeles tend to stay in one district. Hollywood has velvet-rope clubs, West Hollywood its gay strip and Silver Lake its dive bars, but the drives between them are long and the bars call last orders well before dawn. The best parties are often private and hard for a visitor to find.

New York goes much later and in more directions. Lower East Side dives, quiet West Village wine bars, Meatpacking bottle-service rooms and skyline rooftops in Long Island City all sit within one night's reach, alongside the Village gay bars whose history goes back to Stonewall. At weekends the Williamsburg and Bushwick dance floors keep going past sunrise.

Los Angeles has real wild country on its doorstep. There are trails in Griffith Park and the Santa Monica Mountains, pine forest and winter snow in the San Gabriels above 3,000m, and surfing, kayaking and whale watching on the coast. Traffic is the main obstacle, and summer heat makes the inland trails hard work.

New York's outdoors are mostly designed parks and waterfront walks, such as Central Park, the High Line and Brooklyn Bridge Park, with birdwatching at Jamaica Bay. For a proper climb you take the train up the Hudson to Breakneck Ridge, and October, with its autumn colour, is the time to do it.

Los Angeles has an attractive list: Santa Barbara's mission and wine country, the ferry to Catalina and the galleries of Laguna Beach. Nearly all of it means a drive, though, and traffic can stretch two hours into three. The trips lean towards coast and vineyards rather than history.

New York has the better spread, and most of it can be done by train. Philadelphia's Independence Hall, Princeton and Yale's New Haven all sit on the rail lines, and trains run up the Hudson towards Dia Beacon and the Gilded Age estates. Storm King and the North Fork wineries are easier with a car.

Los Angeles is the bigger draw for children. New York has nothing like Disneyland, Universal Studios, Knott's Berry Farm and Magic Mountain, and Los Angeles adds the space shuttle, the tar pits and the beaches, all in easy weather.

New York answers with the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum, the Bronx Zoo, the aircraft carrier museum and the free Staten Island Ferry. But subway stations with only stairs, small hotel rooms and the Midtown crowds wear families out. In Los Angeles the strain is different: hours in the car.

This is the clearest gap between the two. Los Angeles is a basin of separate cities joined by jammed freeways. Metro lines help between downtown, Hollywood, Santa Monica and Pasadena, but most visitors hire a car or use ride-hailing, and plan each day around one walkable area such as Venice or Old Pasadena.

In New York you need no car at all. Manhattan's grid is easy to walk, the subway runs around the clock, and ferries and bike docks fill the gaps. The drawbacks are the stations with only stairs and the awkward links to the airports.

Los Angeles is deep in its own way. Rodeo Drive, Melrose, Abbot Kinney and the Rose Bowl flea market cover luxury to vintage, and the city has a relaxed surf-and-denim style of its own. Each area is a drive from the next, though.

New York offers more range in one trip. It has the Fifth Avenue flagships, the luxury houses of Madison Avenue, the historic department stores, the brands of SoHo and the independent boutiques of Nolita and Williamsburg. Add specialist book, sneaker and camera shops, and all of it is reachable on foot or by subway.

Los Angeles is expensive, but it is a little easier on the wallet than New York. Taco trucks, Koreatown and the San Gabriel Valley feed you well for little, and rooms cost less away from the coast. A hire car, fuel, parking and theme park tickets eat into that saving.

New York is the dearer of the two. Small Manhattan hotel rooms, steep theatre tickets and paid observation decks push the bill up, though the flat subway fare spares you the cost of a car. Both cities have good free days: the beaches and Griffith Observatory in one, and the parks, the High Line and the Staten Island Ferry in the other.

Los Angeles is a serious music city. It has the LA Philharmonic at the Disney Concert Hall and, in summer, the Hollywood Bowl, the rock rooms of the Sunset Strip, and Hollywood comedy and improv clubs that are among the best anywhere.

New York still has more on any given night. Broadway and Off-Broadway, Lincoln Center with the Met Opera, the Philharmonic and City Ballet, Carnegie Hall, and a century of jazz in the Village and Harlem put it in a class of its own for both theatre-goers and concert-goers.

Both cities have a bathing culture that visitors may not expect, and in Los Angeles it is the stronger one. Koreatown has a large cluster of Korean bathhouses open late or round the clock, yoga studios are everywhere, and Ojai's retreats and the desert springs around Palm Springs make easy escapes.

New York's version is smaller: the old Russian and Turkish bathhouse in the East Village, the banyas of Brighton Beach, and jjimjilbang spas out in Queens and New Jersey. Beyond them the noise and pace work against rest, and calm means a morning in a park or in the gardens of the Cloisters.