Newport Beach or Park City?

Newport Beach is a real beach town. It has 10km of sand down the Balboa Peninsula, surf by the piers, calmer coves at Corona del Mar and sheltered harbour strips where toddlers can paddle. The Pacific stays cool, though, so wetsuits and boogie boards are part of the kit.

Park City is in the mountains, far from any coast. In high summer, Jordanelle Reservoir down the valley has sandy swimming areas, but the water is cool and the season short. Most visitors only get wet in a hotel pool or hot tub.

Neither town has a cuisine of its own, but Newport has more range. There are harbour dining rooms with boat views, fish tacos on the peninsula and frozen bananas on Balboa Island. Little Saigon's Vietnamese cooking is about twenty minutes inland.

Park City eats well for its size, with elk, bison and trout on Main Street and après-ski on slopeside decks. The choice runs out quickly, though, and for more variety you drive down to Salt Lake City.

Neither is a sightseeing destination, and the difference is one of kind. Newport offers early modernism and old resort charm: Schindler's Lovell Beach House, the Balboa Pavilion and the island ferry, with the area's art museum next door in Costa Mesa.

Park City's heritage is silver mining. You see it in Main Street's wooden storefronts, the headframes on the slopes and the Park City Museum with its basement jail cells. The Olympic museums from the 2002 Winter Games add an hour or two more.

Newport's evenings split between beach bars and the harbour. Loud beach and dive bars by the Newport and Balboa piers fill with a young local crowd on summer weekends, while wine bars and hotel lounges around the harbour suit a dressier evening that ends before midnight. That gives it a little more range than Park City, though there are no real clubs and last orders come at 2am.

In Park City, going out starts on the slopeside decks as the lifts close and then moves to one short stretch of Main Street, where saloons and cocktail bars can get rowdy on winter weekends. Outside ski season the town goes to bed early. For a proper night out, Newport looks to Los Angeles or Costa Mesa, and Park City to Salt Lake City.

For a coastal town, Newport has good outdoors. The Upper Newport Bay estuary is full of birds in winter, Crystal Cove has bluff and canyon trails, you can paddle in the harbour, and whale-watching boats leave all year.

Park City is in another league. Two ski areas rise straight from town at about 2,100m, and Alta, Snowbird, Brighton and Solitude are within an hour. In summer, hundreds of kilometres of singletrack, lift-served biking and fly fishing on the Provo and Weber rivers take over.

From Newport, most of Southern California is within reach. Laguna Beach and Mission San Juan Capistrano are within half an hour, a ferry runs to Avalon on Catalina, and Los Angeles and San Diego are an easy drive either way, provided you can face the freeways.

Park City has fewer outings. Salt Lake City, with Temple Square and the State Capitol, is the main one. The Heber Valley steam railway and Swiss-style Midway are nearer, and Ogden is about an hour north. Beyond those, most of what lies within reach is landscape.

Both towns are safe, tidy and easy with children, but Newport gives them more to do. There are shallow harbour beaches, the Balboa Fun Zone, the little car ferry and tide pools. Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm are about half an hour inland, though you will spend a lot of time in the car.

Park City is at its best for a skiing family, with well-run ski schools, free buses and the alpine coaster and ziplines at the Olympic Park. Away from the snow there is less, with no zoo or theme park in town, and the altitude can tire small children for the first day or two.

Newport is a car town. It spreads along the coast and up the hills, and the buses are slow and infrequent. Only the flat Balboa Peninsula and Balboa Island, linked by the little ferry, work well on foot or by bike.

Park City is far easier once you arrive. Free buses link Old Town, both ski bases and Kimball Junction, Main Street is walkable if steep, and many hotels run shuttles. A car only matters for trips into the valleys or to other ski areas.

Newport is the stronger place to shop, mostly in luxury malls. Designer names fill the open-air centre above the harbour, and the giant luxury mall in Costa Mesa is ten minutes away. There are also boutiques in Corona del Mar and surf shops on the peninsula.

Park City's shopping is browsing along Main Street: galleries, cowboy boots and Western wear, ski fashion and outdoor gear, plus an outlet centre at Kimball Junction. It fills the time between meals but is not a reason to come.

Both are expensive, so the difference is where the money goes. In Newport it goes on beachfront rooms at resort prices, meals with views, and the car hire, fuel and parking you cannot avoid. Staying inland in Costa Mesa or Irvine saves a little.

In Park City the big costs are lift tickets, ski school and slopeside lodging, which are steepest over Christmas and New Year. Summer and autumn are much cheaper, the free buses mean you can do without a car, and travellers on a budget often stay in Salt Lake City or the Heber Valley.

For the stage, Newport relies on Costa Mesa, ten minutes away. The Segerstrom Center there hosts touring Broadway musicals, ballet and the Pacific Symphony, and South Coast Repertory stages serious drama. In Newport itself there is little beyond summer concerts by the water.

Park City's programme is smaller and mostly in summer. The 1920s Egyptian Theatre on Main Street has comedy and plays, the Eccles Center hosts touring shows, and the Utah Symphony plays on the Deer Valley lawns in summer.

In Newport, relaxation comes from the setting: walks on the bluffs, coffee by the harbour and sunsets over the Pacific. Resort spas, yoga studios and day spas around Corona del Mar fill in the rest, but there are no thermal springs, and the peninsula is crowded on summer weekends.

Park City has the edge, because rest is part of the mountain day. The big lodges at Deer Valley and the Canyons have large spas with massages for tired ski legs, and you sit in hot tubs under the snow. The Homestead Crater in Midway is a limestone dome where you swim in geothermal water at about 35°C.