Napa or Palm Springs?

Neither town has a beach, and in both a stay revolves around the hotel pool. Napa has a little more variety: Lake Berryessa in the eastern hills for summer swimming and boating, and the Sonoma coast over an hour away, though there the Pacific is for walking beside, not for swimming in.

Palm Springs is two hours from the ocean and the Salton Sea is no place for a swim, but its hotels, motels and rental houses are all built around pools, and the long hot season makes lounging beside them a bigger part of the trip.

Napa is the eating and drinking destination of the two. Wine is why people come, from the grand estates of Highway 29 and the Silverado Trail to the Pinot Noir and sparkling wine of Carneros, and Yountville and St Helena hold restaurants people plan whole trips around. Even in town, the Oxbow Public Market makes a good grazing lunch.

Palm Springs eats more casually: brunch on shaded patios, cocktails by the pool and mid-range American places on Palm Canyon Drive, with the date shake from the Indio groves as its one local signature. Both have honest taquerias, but in the desert fine dining is thin and kitchens cut back in summer.

Palm Springs has something real to see: its mid-century modern architecture. Albert Frey and Richard Neutra houses and the folded roofs of the Alexander homes in Twin Palms and Vista Las Palmas make a good day's tour by bike or car, and the art museum and the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum add more.

Napa has less to offer: Victorian frontages on First Street, the 1880 Opera House, contemporary art at di Rosa and old stone wineries up the valley. That is enough for an afternoon between tastings, not a reason to go.

Neither town is for clubbing, but Palm Springs has a proper evening scene. Arenas Road and its long-established LGBTQ bars, with patios and drag nights, the spring pool parties and the retro cocktail lounges on Palm Canyon Drive give it a sociable streak, even if most places close well before the small hours.

In Napa the evening is a long dinner and maybe a glass at a wine bar, and the town is quiet by late evening. For a real night out, people drive the hour to San Francisco.

Palm Springs has the more dramatic scenery right on its doorstep. The aerial tramway climbs from the desert floor to pine forest and winter snow on Mount San Jacinto, the Indian Canyons and Tahquitz Canyon hide palm oases, and Joshua Tree's boulders and dark skies are about an hour away. The catch is summer, when hiking is limited to the hour after dawn.

Napa's outdoors is gentler and pastoral: vineyards between the Mayacamas and Vaca hills, a flat cycling trail, dawn balloon flights, redwoods in Bothe-Napa Valley State Park and the climb up Mount St Helena. Its afternoons get hot too, but nothing like the desert.

Napa is much better placed for day trips. Sonoma's plaza and mission are half an hour over the Carneros hills, Healdsburg and the Russian River valley make a second wine region, and San Francisco is about an hour away by car or by ferry from Vallejo, with Sausalito and Berkeley on the way.

From Palm Springs the outings are smaller and quirkier: the pine village of Idyllwild, the Western film set at Pioneertown, and Salvation Mountain beside the Salton Sea. Los Angeles and San Diego are too far for a comfortable day, so the options run out sooner.

Palm Springs is the easier of the two with children, though neither is really built for them. The Living Desert zoo, the tramway with snow at the top in winter and the Air Museum's old warplanes make real outings, and the large resorts down the valley welcome families. It works best outside the heat of late spring and summer.

Napa is harder going with children. They get bored in tasting rooms, the drives between wineries are long, and the main options are the animal park in Vallejo and the geyser and petting farm near Calistoga.

Both have a small, walkable downtown, and beyond it both need a car. In Napa the real problem is the tasting day: the wineries are spread over some 50km of valley, and since tasting and driving do not mix, many visitors hire a driver or join a tour.

Palm Springs is easier to arrive in, with the airport on the edge of town, and in the cooler months bikes suit the flat mid-century neighbourhoods. The canyons, the tramway and Joshua Tree still mean driving, and in summer nobody walks at midday.

What you take home from Napa is mostly wine, often several cases shipped straight from the cellars you tasted at. Around that there are olive oil and food gifts at the Oxbow market, cookware and design shops on St Helena's main street and an outlet mall for the familiar brands, but little fashion and no markets.

Palm Springs gives a shopper more to hunt for. Its speciality is mid-century modern furniture, lighting and vintage clothing, in the consignment shops and galleries of the Uptown Design District, and the weekly Village Fest street fair adds crafts downtown. For bigger names, El Paseo in Palm Desert covers luxury, and the Cabazon outlets are about twenty minutes west.

Both are expensive, but Napa is more so, and in every season. Rooms are priced for luxury travel, the famous estates charge heavily for tastings, the celebrated restaurants are special-occasion places and a tasting-day driver adds more. Saving money means chain hotels further south, taquerias and smaller cellars.

Palm Springs charges resort rates in winter and spring too, but in summer room prices fall sharply for anyone who can bear the heat, and simple motels keep costs down all year. In both places the hire car is part of the bill.

Palm Springs has more on, mostly spread across the valley. Coachella and Stagecoach fill the Indio polo grounds each April, the McCallum Theatre takes touring shows, the casinos book well-known acts, and in town there are drag cabaret and piano bars.

Napa's programme is smaller but well housed: concerts and comedy at the 1880 Opera House, touring bands at an Art Deco theatre, a summer classical festival at wineries and a big rock and pop festival each late spring. For opera or an orchestra, Napa visitors go to San Francisco.

Napa does wellness well, but you have to go looking for it. The mineral water is in Calistoga, at the far northern end of the valley about forty minutes' drive from town, where visitors have soaked in volcanic mud and hot pools for well over a century, usually after a morning in the cellars. Closer in, the resorts of Carneros and the surrounding hills have big spas that work grape seed and other vineyard products into their treatments. The slow rhythm of tastings and long lunches is restful in itself, especially on weekdays and away from the summer crowds.

Palm Springs is the better choice for a restful trip, because the springs are part of the town rather than a drive away. The Agua Caliente bathhouse sits downtown over the spring that is sacred to the Cahuilla, and Desert Hot Springs, a quarter of an hour north, has small spa motels whose pools are fed by hot water from the ground. The bigger difference is that the whole stay is built around rest: a pool, the mountain view and very little you feel you ought to be doing, with dry winter sun that makes it easy to stop.