Park City or Santa Monica?

This is the most one-sided difference between the two. Park City has no beach. In summer people swim at Jordanelle Reservoir, but the season is short and the water cold. Most visitors only get into water in a hotel pool or hot tub.

Santa Monica is a beach town. A wide strip of sand runs the length of the town, with lifeguard towers along it, and Zuma, El Matador and Point Dume are further north. The Pacific is cool even in late summer, though, so the beach is more for lying on the sand than for long swims.

Santa Monica has better food and much more choice. Seasonal Californian cooking based on the farmers market, good seafood and solid Italian and Japanese restaurants are found across Main Street, Montana Avenue and Venice. The cheap immigrant food Los Angeles is famous for is a long drive east, though.

Park City has a few polished restaurants serving elk, bison, trout and steak, plus après-ski drinks on the slopes. Beyond that, most of the cheaper meals come from chain restaurants at Kimball Junction.

Neither place is much of a sightseeing destination, but Santa Monica has more within reach. The pier marks the end of Route 66, Bergamot Station is full of galleries, and the Getty Center and Getty Villa are a short drive away, both serious museums.

Park City's heritage is about silver mining. You'll see it on the wooden storefronts of Main Street, at the old mine headframes on the slopes and in the Park City Museum, plus the Olympic Park museums from 2002. All of that fits into one afternoon.

Santa Monica gives you more of an evening, though neither place is for clubbing. Rooftop bars by the Promenade, the pubs on Main Street and a looser crowd in Venice keep things going into the night. For dancing, people take a long taxi ride to Hollywood.

Park City's nights start at après-ski and then move to a short run of saloons and cocktail bars on Main Street. These are lively on winter weekends but quiet early, and the town is quiet in summer.

Park City is the stronger choice for the outdoors. It has big ski terrain right in town, light powder all winter, and Alta and Snowbird are about an hour away. In summer there are hundreds of kilometres of singletrack and lifts that carry bikes up the mountain. Add fly fishing on the Provo and Weber rivers and golden aspens on the ridges in autumn.

Santa Monica's outdoors are gentler. Canyon trails through chaparral run up to views over the bay, the beach path is good for cycling, and there are surfing lessons and whale watching. The draw is being able to get outside on almost any day of the year.

Santa Monica has a much wider range of day trips. In a couple of hours you can reach Santa Barbara's mission and wine country, quiet Ojai, the coves at Laguna Beach and the ferry to Catalina. Pasadena's Huntington Library and the rest of Los Angeles are closer still, though traffic decides how far you get.

From Park City, the main outing is Salt Lake City, with Temple Square and the Capitol. Beyond that there's the heritage steam railway in the Heber Valley, the Swiss-style chalets of Midway and Ogden's old railroad street. After those, most of what's within reach is landscape.

Both are easy with children, but the days look very different. Park City is built around learning to ski, with good ski schools and free buses to the slopes. The Olympic Park has an alpine coaster, ziplines and freestyle skiers flipping into a pool. The altitude can tire small children for the first day or two.

In Santa Monica, family days revolve around the sand and the pier, which has a Ferris wheel, a carousel and a small aquarium of local sea life. Universal Studios and Disneyland each take up most of a day with the driving.

Park City is the easier of the two to manage without a car. Free buses link Old Town, both ski bases, the outlying lodging and Kimball Junction, so most visitors never need to drive. A car only matters for getting into the valleys or reaching the other ski areas.

Santa Monica's centre is walkable and the light rail reaches downtown Los Angeles. But the Getty Center, Hollywood and the Malibu canyons are poorly served by public transport, and with jammed freeways most visitors end up hiring a car or using ride-hailing.

Santa Monica has more shopping, and more variety. The Promenade has chains and flagship stores, Montana Avenue has upmarket boutiques, and Abbot Kinney in Venice is known for design-led fashion. Surfwear is the local speciality.

Park City's Main Street is resort browsing: galleries, Western boots and ski fashion. Kimball Junction has outlets, but there are few local crafts and no real market.

Both are expensive, but the costs pile up in different places. In Park City, lift tickets, ski school and slopeside rooms push winter, especially Christmas, to the top of the market. Summer and autumn cost considerably less, and staying in Salt Lake City or the Heber Valley saves more.

Santa Monica is most expensive for ocean-view rooms in summer, and parking and car hire add to the bill. On the other hand, the beach, the trails and the bike path are free, and staying a little inland helps.

Santa Monica has a little more going on. The Broad Stage puts on chamber music, dance and theatre, and there are long-standing folk venues in intimate rooms. The Philharmonic and the Hollywood Bowl are across Los Angeles, though that means a long drive.

Park City mostly comes alive in summer, with the Utah Symphony playing on the lawns at Deer Valley. The rest of the year, the Egyptian Theatre's comedy and cabaret make up much of what's on.

Park City is the better place to recover from a day's exertion. Grand spas in the ski lodges, outdoor hot tubs under the snow and the Homestead Crater, a warm spring inside a limestone dome in Midway, give the town a real restorative side.

In Santa Monica, wellness is something you do: yoga on the sand, a run along the ocean and sunset over the bay. There are spas in the hotels, but no springs or bathing tradition.