Monterey or South Lake Tahoe?

Neither is a swimming resort, but only one gives you water you might want to get into. Monterey Bay stays cold all year and many stretches have rip currents, so Carmel Beach, Del Monte and the Asilomar dunes are for walks, picnics and watching the surf.

South Lake Tahoe's beaches are on fresh water under the pines, with clear turquoise shallows over white sand at Pope, Baldwin and Zephyr Cove, and Sand Harbor's boulder coves round the east shore. The swimming season is really just midsummer, but a hot August afternoon there is a proper beach day, which Monterey rarely gives you.

Monterey eats better. Local squid, Dungeness crab and sand dabs, artichokes and greens from the Salinas Valley and Pinot Noir from the Santa Lucia Highlands give meals a real sense of place, as long as you skip the bread-bowl chowder on the wharf and eat in Old Monterey, Pacific Grove or Carmel instead.

South Lake Tahoe has no regional cooking to speak of: casino steakhouses and buffets, pizza, taquerias and skiers' breakfasts along Highway 50. Its strong point is craft beer from small local breweries, and many visitors end up cooking in the cabin.

Monterey has real history that you can walk around. As the old capital of Spanish and Mexican Alta California, it keeps the Custom House, Colton Hall and the Royal Presidio Chapel. The Carmel Mission is ten minutes south, and the cannery shells of Steinbeck's Cannery Row line the waterfront.

South Lake Tahoe has far less to see. The Tallac estates and Vikingsholm on Emerald Bay recall the lake's summers as a retreat for wealthy San Franciscans, and a small museum covers the Washoe and the logging era, but one morning is enough for all of it.

Both towns are quiet after dinner, but South Lake Tahoe at least lets you stay out late. Cross into Nevada at Stateline and the casino floors, lounges and a club or two stay open all night, busiest on long weekends and in peak ski weeks. The California side keeps to brewpubs and après-ski at the gondola base.

In Monterey an evening out means a drink on Alvarado Street among locals and students from the language and naval schools, or a hotel bar on Cannery Row, and the town is mostly asleep before midnight.

Both are superb, in completely different ways. Monterey's draw is wildlife you can see from the shore: whales over the submarine canyon, otters in the kelp and kelp-forest diving, with Point Lobos and the redwood canyons of Big Sur just to the south.

South Lake Tahoe is the bigger outdoor base because it works all year. The granite basins of the Desolation Wilderness begin minutes from town, the Rim Trail circles the lake, and Emerald Bay is one of the great views of the West. Winter adds deep snow and three ski areas, something the mild coast cannot match.

Monterey's outings are shorter and prettier: the cottages and galleries of Carmel, Victorian Pacific Grove, the tasting rooms of Carmel Valley, Steinbeck's Salinas and the Santa Cruz boardwalk, all within an hour.

From South Lake Tahoe the outings are about Gold Rush and silver-boom history instead: the saloons of Virginia City, Genoa and Coloma, with Reno for a bigger casino city. Most are an hour or more over mountain roads. They fill a bad-weather day well but are less of a draw in themselves.

Monterey has the edge with children, mainly because of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which can fill a rainy day by itself. Tide pools, whale-watching boats and Dennis the Menace Park take care of the rest.

South Lake Tahoe is an outdoor playground with little under a roof: shallow lake beaches and paddleboards in summer, ski schools and sledding hills in winter. When storms close in there is no aquarium or zoo to fall back on, and the casino strip is no place to hang around with children.

Monterey's waterfront is easy on foot. The flat recreation trail links the wharf, downtown, Cannery Row and the aquarium, and a hired bike gets you on to Pacific Grove. Big Sur and Carmel Valley still need a car.

In South Lake Tahoe only the small Stateline core is walkable. Beaches and trailheads are spread along the shore, the Emerald Bay road crawls on summer weekends, and winter snow brings chain controls on the passes into the basin. A car is close to essential, and the driving takes more care.

The better browsing is around Monterey, though mostly just outside the town. Carmel-by-the-Sea fills its small streets with art galleries and independent clothing and homeware boutiques, and Pacific Grove has antique shops. Cannery Row and the wharf in Monterey itself stick to saltwater taffy and sea-otter gifts.

South Lake Tahoe's shops are for kitting out a trip: ski and outdoor gear, rental stores, a supermarket run for the cabin and a few galleries selling lake photography. There is no shopping street to wander.

Monterey is the harder of the two on a budget. Peninsula rooms are priced for Californian weekenders, the Carmel and waterfront hotels are dear, and rates climb further in August during the Pebble Beach classic-car week. Dinner on Cannery Row costs resort prices, and the aquarium is a real expense for a family.

To save money there, stay in a highway motel or in Seaside or Marina and come midweek or in winter. South Lake Tahoe has more ways to keep costs down. It is at its dearest at Christmas, in peak ski weeks and in high summer, and lift tickets are steep. Outside those times, though, the Nevada casino hotels cut their rates heavily midweek and in spring and autumn, and a cabin kitchen keeps food costs down.

Neither has much on stage all year, and the difference is in kind. Monterey's strength is festivals with real history: the jazz festival every September since 1958 and the Carmel Bach Festival in summer, plus a symphony season.

South Lake Tahoe's live entertainment comes from casino showrooms, which book touring rock and country acts and comedians all year. In summer there is also Shakespeare on the beach at Sand Harbor and concerts at the Tallac estates.

In both places, rest comes from the setting rather than a spa culture. In Monterey that means fog lifting off the bay and slow evenings in Pacific Grove, with resort spas among the vineyards of Carmel Valley and at the golf resorts of Pebble Beach. At Tahoe it means quiet mornings by the lake and cabins in the pines.

Tahoe's edge is natural hot water. The mineral pool at Grover Hot Springs and the resorts in the Carson Valley are both an easy drive for an afternoon soak, while Monterey's coast has nothing you can simply drop in on.