Park City or San Jose?

Park City's water is Jordanelle Reservoir, sandy and pleasant for a short, cool summer season, and otherwise the hotel pool. Neither place is a beach destination, but San Jose at least has the Pacific within reach. Santa Cruz and Capitola lie over the mountains and have a real beach-town feel, though the sea is too cold for most people to do more than paddle or surf in a wetsuit.

Park City offers a narrow but polished choice: elk, bison and trout along walkable Main Street, après-ski drinks on slopeside decks as the evening ritual, and the chains at Kimball Junction for cheaper meals.

San Jose has far more to discover. One of the country's largest Vietnamese communities serves pho and banh mi in Little Saigon, and taquerias and Indian and Korean kitchens line the roads towards Santa Clara. The catch is driving between suburban plazas rather than strolling a dining street.

Park City's heritage is the mining town itself: the wooden storefronts on Main Street, the headframes on the slopes, the Park City Museum with its old jail cells and the Olympic Park museums. An afternoon covers it.

San Jose has enough for a couple of days, with the eccentric Winchester Mystery House, the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, Mission Santa Clara and Silicon Valley's story at the Computer History Museum. Neither city has a deep historic core, but San Jose gives a curious visitor much more to see.

Both go quiet well before the small hours. Park City's nights depend on the ski season: decks at last lift, then saloons and cocktail bars on Main Street on winter weekends, and early nights the rest of the year.

San Jose has more going on and keeps it up all year. There are beer halls and a covered market at San Pedro Square around arena events, and dive bars and a few dance clubs in SoFA, with San Francisco a train ride away for a bigger night.

Park City is a true mountain destination. Two big ski areas climb straight out of town at about 2,100m, and Alta and Snowbird are within an hour. In summer the lifts carry bikes uphill to trails that run back down into the streets.

San Jose's outdoors are gentler and more spread out: redwood groves at Big Basin and Henry Cowell, foothill walks at Alum Rock, and sea otters and whales on Monterey Bay. They are varied and rewarding, but each one is a separate drive rather than terrain on your doorstep.

From Park City, the main outing is Salt Lake City down the canyon, for Temple Square and a proper choice of restaurants. Beyond that there are the Heber Valley steam railway, Swiss-style Midway and Ogden's railroad-era street, and then the options are mostly scenery.

San Jose is far better placed. San Francisco is an hour away by Caltrain, and Stanford, Berkeley, the Santa Cruz boardwalk, Monterey and Carmel and the Santa Cruz Mountains wineries each make a full day.

Both work well with children, but they make for different trips. Park City is a ski-school vacation, with gentle learning slopes, free buses to the lifts, a safe small town and summer alpine slides and ziplines. Altitude and winter costs are the drawbacks.

San Jose is a driving vacation built around big attractions: Great America, the Happy Hollow zoo, the children's discovery museum and, further out, the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Its mild weather keeps outdoor days easy for most of the year.

Once you arrive, Park City is easy without a car. Free buses link Old Town, both ski bases and Kimball Junction, and Main Street is walkable, if steep. A car only matters for other valleys and ski areas.

San Jose is the other way round. Downtown is flat and walkable, and Caltrain and light rail cover the main corridors, but the sights, foothills and coast are spread across a valley of freeways. Most visitors hire a car and plan around rush hour.

Park City's Main Street is for browsing between meals, with galleries, cowboy boots and Western wear, outdoor gear and ski fashion, plus an outlet centre at Kimball Junction. San Jose serves a serious shopper better. A very large mall and an open-air boutique street on the west side carry most international and luxury brands, and Japantown and the Asian plazas offer something less standard.

Neither is cheap, but Park City costs more, especially in ski season, when lift tickets, ski school and slopeside lodging add up. Summer and autumn ease the bill. San Jose is also expensive, with hotels priced for business travel and a hire car on top, but weekend rates drop and the suburban Vietnamese and Mexican eateries keep meals reasonable.

Park City's stages are the 1920s Egyptian Theatre and the Eccles Center, and the town's season peaks in summer, when the Utah Symphony plays on the Deer Valley lawns. San Jose has more to choose from across the year. Opera San José performs in the restored California Theatre, the symphony and touring Broadway shows play downtown, and there are arena concerts and a long-running summer jazz festival.

Park City is the more restful of the two. The Deer Valley and Canyons lodges run large spas for tired legs, outdoor hot pools come with almost every stay, and in Midway you can swim in warm geothermal water inside the Homestead Crater's limestone dome.

San Jose has hotel and day spas and a few Korean-style bathhouses, but the city is built around the working week. Calm comes in short doses, in leafy Los Gatos and Saratoga or the Japanese gardens at Hakone and Kelley Park.