Park City or Seattle?

Neither city is a beach destination, but Seattle at least has a shoreline. Its sandy beaches on Puget Sound, such as Alki Beach and Golden Gardens, are for bonfires and sunsets rather than swimming. In July and August, though, the lifeguarded beaches on Lake Washington are warm enough for a proper swim.

Park City has no coast at all. Summer swimming means a drive down to Jordanelle Reservoir, which has pleasant sandy areas but cold water. For most visitors, the hotel pool or hot tub is the only water they get into.

Seattle is the better place to eat because it has a local cuisine of its own. There are oysters, Dungeness crab and wild salmon from the surrounding waters, Pike Place Market to graze through, serious coffee in every neighbourhood and strong Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese and Korean cooking in the Chinatown-International District.

Park City's restaurants are polished but limited, mostly serving modern American mountain food such as elk, bison and trout on Main Street and at the resort bases. Its real food ritual is après-ski on the slopeside decks, and for more variety you drive down to Salt Lake City.

Seattle gives a curious visitor two or three days of sights. There are the Space Needle and Seattle Center, with the Chihuly glass and the Museum of Pop Culture, as well as the Seattle Art Museum, the Northwest Coast Indigenous art at the Burke Museum and the huge Museum of Flight.

Park City's heritage fills a single afternoon. The old silver-mining Main Street, the mine headframes on the slopes and the Park City Museum tell a good story, and the Utah Olympic Park covers the 2002 Winter Games. Nobody comes here for the sightseeing, though.

Seattle offers a real night out. It centres on the cocktail bars, dive bars and dance floors along Pike and Pine on Capitol Hill, with brewery taprooms in Ballard and a younger club crowd in Belltown. Even so, last call at 2am stops it running very late.

Park City's evenings begin on the slopeside decks when the lifts close and then move to a short row of saloons and bars on Main Street. It can be lively on winter weekends, but the scene is small and finishes early. Outside ski season, there is little going on after dinner.

Both are superb bases for the outdoors, in different ways. In Park City the mountains start at the edge of town. Two large ski areas rise straight from the streets, steeper resorts such as Alta and Snowbird are within an hour, and in summer hundreds of kilometres of biking and hiking trails leave from town.

Seattle's outdoors mixes land and water. Kayaking on Lake Union, ferries across the Sound with a chance of seeing orcas, and the bluffs of Discovery Park are all in the city. The Cascades, Mount Rainier's glaciers and the Olympic rainforest take a drive of one to two hours or more.

Seattle has the more varied day trips, many of them by ferry. Bainbridge Island is half an hour across the water, and Whidbey Island's farm villages and the Victorian seaport of Port Townsend are further on. The Woodinville tasting rooms and Tacoma's Museum of Glass are both within an hour by road.

From Park City, Salt Lake City is the main trip out, with Temple Square and the State Capitol. The Heber Valley steam railway, Swiss-style Midway and the railroad-era street in Ogden give you a day or two more. Beyond those, it is mostly scenery to drive through.

A family trip to Park City is about doing things outdoors, while in Seattle it is about places to visit. In Park City, winter means ski schools and gentle learning slopes, and the Utah Olympic Park has an alpine coaster, ziplines and freestyle skiers flipping into a splash pool. In summer, the resort bases add alpine slides and climbing walls. The thin air can tire small children for a day or two, and there is no zoo or aquarium in town.

Seattle has Woodland Park Zoo, the aquarium on the waterfront, the Pacific Science Center and the Museum of Flight with its space shuttle trainer, and children enjoy the monorail and the ferries for their own sake. Those indoor options matter in the wet months. The steep streets up from the waterfront are hard work with a pushchair.

Park City runs on free buses, Seattle on light rail. Park City's buses link Old Town and Main Street with both ski bases, the outlying lodges and Kimball Junction, and hotel shuttles fill the gaps. Parking in Old Town is awkward, which is another reason to leave the car. Getting there is the harder part: there is no rail, the airport is about 40 minutes away by shuttle, and the canyon road slows down in snowstorms.

In Seattle, Link light rail runs from the airport through downtown to Capitol Hill and the University District, and one tap card covers buses, streetcars, the monorail and the water taxis. The centre is walkable, if hilly. Because water splits the city up, Ballard or Alki are a slow bus ride away. You will want a car for the national parks, just as you would for the other Utah ski areas.

Seattle is the better place to shop, less for its downtown department stores than for its neighbourhoods. Look for record shops and vintage clothing on Capitol Hill, Fremont's Sunday market, the design shops in Ballard and the makers' stalls at Pike Place. Its big outdoor gear stores serve the same mountain culture as Park City's, on a larger scale.

Park City's Main Street is pleasant for browsing galleries, Western wear, cowboy boots and ski fashion between meals, and there are outlet stores at Kimball Junction. There is little beyond that.

Neither city is cheap, but Park City is harder on the wallet. In ski season, lodging, lift tickets and ski school all cost what you would pay at the top North American resorts, and the Christmas weeks cost more still. Summer and autumn are much easier, and many visitors on a budget stay in Salt Lake City or the Heber Valley instead.

Seattle's hotels and restaurant bills are also high. Public transport, the counters at Pike Place and the teriyaki shops keep daily costs easier to manage, though, and the outer neighbourhoods along the light rail are cheaper places to sleep.

Here Seattle is far ahead. Seattle Opera and Pacific Northwest Ballet share McCaw Hall, the symphony plays a full season at Benaroya Hall, and the 5th Avenue and the Paramount put on musicals and touring shows. Above all it is a music city, the home of Jimi Hendrix and grunge, with bands playing in Belltown, Capitol Hill and Ballard most nights.

Park City has the 1920s Egyptian Theatre on Main Street and touring shows at the Eccles Center. In summer the Utah Symphony plays on the lawns at Deer Valley, but outside summer there is little on.

Park City is the better place for rest and treatments. The big ski lodges at Deer Valley and the Canyons run polished spas with massages for tired legs, and an outdoor hot tub in the snow comes with most stays. At the Homestead Crater in Midway, you swim in warm spring water inside a limestone dome.

Seattle's spas are mostly in downtown hotels, with a few Korean-style bathhouses in the suburbs, and its hot springs are a long drive away. Its calm is of a different kind: slow mornings in coffee houses and walks in the Japanese Garden and the Arboretum.