Palm Desert or Phoenix?

Neither city has a beach. In both, swimming means a resort pool, and the Pacific is a long drive away. The difference is in what else is on offer. Phoenix has the Salt River reservoirs, where you can swim off small beaches below desert cliffs, and tubing down the river in summer. Palm Desert's nearest large body of water is the Salton Sea, which nobody swims in.

Phoenix has the stronger and more local food. Its Sonoran Mexican cooking, from carne asada to paper-thin flour tortillas, runs through whole neighbourhoods, and central Phoenix and Roosevelt Row add independent kitchens and good bread and pizza.

Palm Desert eats well but predictably, with steakhouses and Californian bistros along El Paseo. For its real flavour, head to Indio's taquerias and the date groves for a date shake.

Phoenix offers far more sightseeing. The Heard Museum ranks among the great collections of Native American art, the Musical Instrument Museum can fill half a day, and Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West is a highlight for architecture lovers. The Hohokam canals at Pueblo Grande add some depth, though the sights are spread out.

Palm Desert was built after the war and has little to show apart from its branch of the Palm Springs Art Museum and the galleries on El Paseo. Visitors interested in the mid-century modern houses usually drive to Palm Springs.

Phoenix gives you a real choice of night out. There are the clubs and rooftop bars of Old Town Scottsdale, the student bars of Tempe's Mill Avenue, and quieter cocktail and craft beer bars downtown. It all still winds down at 2am.

Palm Desert's evenings are wine bars and patio happy hours around El Paseo, mostly for an older crowd, and they end early. For anything later you drive to a casino or to Palm Springs.

Both are excellent bases for desert outdoors, with mountains rising straight from the edge of town. Palm Desert has the Santa Rosa trails, palm oases with winter streams in the Indian Canyons, the tramway up to pine forest and Joshua Tree's boulders an hour away.

Phoenix has more within the city itself: South Mountain, the scrambles up Camelback, and saguaro forest in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. Further out are the Superstitions and the red rocks of Sedona.

The day-trip choice is broadly level, but very different in character. From Palm Desert the trips are short and quirky: Palm Springs is twenty minutes away, and further out are Temecula's tasting rooms, cool Idyllwild and the painted Salvation Mountain.

Phoenix's outings are longer drives into Arizona's history: hillside Jerome, the Montezuma Castle cliff dwelling, Sedona and Tucson's Mission San Xavier del Bac. Neither city is a realistic base for its famous big-name destinations.

Phoenix keeps children busier. Its zoo, aquarium, science centre, children's museum and water parks cover several days, and spring training baseball makes an easy March outing. The catch is the long drives between them.

Palm Desert has one standout, the Living Desert zoo and garden in town. Beyond that the resort pools do most of the work, because the valley is geared to adults and golf.

Both need a car, and both reward one with open roads and easy parking. Phoenix at least has a light rail line linking the airport, downtown and Tempe, though its distances are far greater. Palm Desert is smaller, but its only walkable stretch is a few blocks of El Paseo.

The two are evenly matched, but each has its own speciality. Palm Desert's highlight is El Paseo, a palm-lined street of boutiques, jewellers and galleries, and a big designer outlet centre is half an hour away.

Phoenix has larger luxury malls in Scottsdale and the Biltmore district. Its distinctive buy is Navajo and Zuni silver and turquoise, Hopi carvings and rugs, best found in museum shops and reputable galleries.

Phoenix is the somewhat cheaper of the two. Chain hotels along its freeways are good value, Sonoran Mexican food makes eating out cheap, and the hiking is mostly free.

Palm Desert's winter resort rates and polished dining push costs up, and golf and spa days add more. Both cities get much cheaper in summer, when the heat empties the resorts.

The two are broadly level, but the line-ups are different. Phoenix has a resident symphony, opera and ballet, plus touring shows at Wright's round ASU Gammage auditorium. Palm Desert relies on the McCallum Theatre's winter season of touring acts, and the Coachella and Stagecoach weekends in nearby Indio are among the most famous festivals anywhere.

Palm Desert has the edge, and the clearest reason is half an hour north in Desert Hot Springs. There, small spa hotels fill their pools straight from natural hot mineral springs, a bathing tradition about as old as the town itself, so a soak in real spring water makes an easy afternoon out. Back in Palm Desert, resort spas and long afternoons by the pool make doing very little the natural way to spend a week.

Phoenix offers a different kind of rest, and it stays inside its big resorts below Camelback Mountain and across north Scottsdale. These are generous places, with treatment menus built on local desert plants and clay, but the city has no springs or historic baths to visit, and outside the resorts it moves at the pace of any large car city. Both are most restful in the dry, sunny months from autumn to spring.