New York or Stowe?

New York has real Atlantic beaches at the end of the subway lines: Coney Island with its boardwalk and rides, the longer Rockaways with their surfers, and Jones Beach about an hour out. Stowe is far inland, so a swim means a mountain swimming hole or a drive to the small sandy shores of Waterbury Reservoir or Lake Elmore.

Both have the same short swimming season, from late June to early September, and in neither is the water the reason to go. Still, a day at the sea reached by train is a fuller outing than a dip at an unguarded lake after a hike.

New York is one of the great eating cities. It has Fujianese food in Flushing, Tibetan in Jackson Heights and Caribbean in Crown Heights, along with pizza slices, bagels and pastrami, and fine dining at the top end. You could eat a different country's food at every meal.

Stowe eats well for a small resort, but on a narrower theme: hazy Vermont IPAs from breweries that beer lovers travel for, farm cheddar, maple syrup, cider doughnuts and farm-to-table dining rooms along Mountain Road. The choice thins out in the quiet months, and there is no street food.

The gap here is about as wide as it gets. New York has the Met, MoMA, the Guggenheim and the Cloisters, plus the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and the Brooklyn Bridge, enough for a week of sightseeing without repeating yourself.

Stowe's culture is mostly the look of a New England village, with a white steeple and covered bridges. The ski museum and the von Trapp estate are its curiosities, and an afternoon covers them.

New York goes on all night. It runs from East Village dives and West Village wine bars to skyline rooftops and the warehouse clubs of Williamsburg and Bushwick, which run past dawn. Stowe's evenings mean après-ski in the base lodges and a few brewery taprooms, lively in peak ski weeks and then early to bed for the first lift. For anything later, people drive to Burlington.

Stowe is built around its landscape. Mount Mansfield rises right above the valley, with ski runs, glades and backcountry routes in winter, and the Long Trail, the boulders of Smugglers' Notch and waterfalls in summer, all a short drive away.

New York's outdoors is mostly designed: Central Park, Prospect Park and the High Line, with birdwatching at Jamaica Bay. For a real climb you take a train to Breakneck Ridge. Both are at their best in October colour, but in Stowe the colour is all around you, not a train ride away.

New York's best outings run on the railway. Philadelphia, with Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell and its colonial old town, is about an hour and a half away by train, Princeton's Gothic campus is on the same line, and New Haven, with Yale and its museums, is about two hours up the Connecticut shore. Up the Hudson, the train stops in Beacon for Dia's art in a converted factory, while the Gilded Age estates at Hyde Park and the sculpture fields of Storm King need a short drive as well.

Every outing from Stowe starts with the car. Burlington on Lake Champlain is under an hour away, with the folk art and lake steamboat of the Shelburne Museum just beyond it, and there are also Montpelier's gold-domed statehouse and the cider mills of Waterbury. They make pleasant afternoons, but few of them fill a whole day.

New York has more ready-made entertainment for children: the dinosaur halls at the Natural History museum, the Bronx Zoo, the Coney Island aquarium and the aircraft carrier on the Hudson, with the carousel and rowing boats of Central Park in between. The downside is the logistics: subway stations with only stairs, small hotel rooms and tiring Midtown crowds.

Stowe suits families who like being outdoors. It has a big ski school with gentle slopes, a flat riverside path for bikes and pushchairs, and sugarhouses where children can watch maple syrup being made. It is calm and safe, but there are no zoos or children's museums, and every outing needs the car.

In New York you never need a car. Manhattan's grid is easy to walk, the subway runs around the clock, and ferries and Citi Bikes fill the gaps, though getting to and from the airports is awkward. Stowe stretches along an 11km valley road. Beyond a walkable village, a riverside path and a ski-season shuttle, it needs a car, with snow tyres in winter.

New York is a reason to travel for shopping alone: flagship stores on Fifth Avenue, luxury houses on Madison Avenue, fashion brands in SoHo, independent boutiques on the Lower East Side, and vintage and records in Williamsburg. Stowe has ski and outdoor shops, craft galleries selling pottery and wool, and maple syrup and cheddar to take home. They make good souvenirs, but nobody comes for the shopping.

Neither is cheap, but they cost money in different ways. New York is expensive every day of the year, with small Manhattan rooms, tips on top of meals and high museum fees. Pizza slices, Queens restaurants, the flat-fare subway and the free parks and ferries soften the bill, and so does staying in Brooklyn or Queens.

Stowe's costs follow the seasons. Lodging and lift tickets peak at Christmas, in the school vacations and in foliage weeks, ease in summer and fall sharply in spring and November. Choose the quiet months and Stowe is the easier of the two on a budget.

New York is far ahead. It has Broadway, the Metropolitan Opera, the Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall, with jazz in Village basements and gospel in Harlem, any night of the week. Stowe has a modest calendar: touring acts at the arts centre at Spruce Peak, community theatre in summer and hillside concerts that carry on the von Trapp family's musical tradition. Outside those seasons there is little on.

Stowe is the better place to rest. Its resort spas have saunas, steam rooms and heated outdoor pools where you sit in the snow, and the quiet inns and still evenings do the rest. It all comes at resort prices, though, and there are no hot springs.

New York has the more unusual bathing culture: the century-old Russian and Turkish baths of the East Village, the banyas of Brighton Beach and Korean spas in Queens. But you walk out of them into noise and crowds, and calm here means a morning in a big park or the gardens of the Cloisters.