Puebla or San Miguel de Allende?

Neither city has any beach life, and either coast is a separate journey of several hours. Where they differ is the water you can get into. Puebla's spring-fed balnearios on the city edge have pools large enough to swim in. San Miguel's warm valley pools are for soaking rather than doing lengths.

Puebla is the stronger food destination by some distance. Mole poblano and chiles en nogada were born here, and everyday eating has its own identity: cemitas, chalupas, tacos árabes and the convent sweets on the Calle de los Dulces. Market fondas serve all of this cheaply.

San Miguel eats well for its size, with rooftop and courtyard restaurants, cooks reworking Bajío ingredients, and Guanajuato wines on the lists. But much of it is aimed at foreign residents, and after a few days it feels repetitive. Puebla's cooking is the kind people travel for.

Puebla has more to see and more of it is first-rate. The Capilla del Rosario's gilded stucco, the Biblioteca Palafoxiana, the cathedral's towers and the collections of the Museo Amparo and the Baroque museum fill two or three slow days.

San Miguel's appeal is the whole townscape rather than the individual sights: ochre streets climbing a hill, the pink spires of the Parroquia, and the Siqueiros mural and galleries at Bellas Artes. It lacks major museums, and two unhurried days cover it.

Neither is a party town, and evenings in both begin over mezcal on a terrace. The difference is where the action goes later. In Puebla it moves out to Cholula's student bar strip and to the clubs of Angelópolis. San Miguel stays in its centre, livelier on weekends when visitors arrive from the capital, and quiet early during the week.

Puebla has the more dramatic setting. Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl dominate the skyline, La Malinche offers a long pine-forest climb to above 4,400m, and the Izta-Popo park has high-altitude trails. Most of these need a car or an early start.

Around San Miguel the outdoors is gentler and drier: cactus scrub, the canyon trails of El Charco del Ingenio, horse riding and dawn balloon flights. That fills pleasant mornings, but there are no mountains or forests to match Puebla's.

Both cities are excellent bases, but the trips are of different kinds. From Puebla the highlights are close and ancient: Cholula's huge pyramid half an hour away, the tiled village churches of Tonantzintla and Acatepec, Huejotzingo's convent, and Cacaxtla's murals near Tlaxcala, with Mexico City possible in a long day.

San Miguel's outings are mostly other colonial towns, notably Guanajuato in its ravine and Querétaro with its aqueduct. Add to these Atotonilco's painted sanctuary, the monolith at Bernal and the wine country. Many of them need a driver.

Puebla is the easier city with children. Africam Safari, where animals roam around the car, is a genuine draw, and the observation wheel, the open grounds of the hilltop forts and the pyramid tunnels add more. The centre is flat.

San Miguel is built for adults, and its steep, uneven streets wear out small legs and pushchairs. Older children will enjoy the warm pools, a horse ride and the fiesta fireworks, but younger ones may run out of things to do quickly.

Puebla's historic centre is a flat, logical grid, and nearly every sight is a short walk from the zócalo. Beyond it the city sprawls. There is no metro and visitors find the buses hard to use, so Angelópolis, Cholula and Africam mean a taxi or a ride-hailing app.

San Miguel is smaller, and everything is within a walk of the Jardín. The catch is the walking itself: steep cobbles, narrow pavements and the altitude make every climb tiring, and cheap taxis take the strain up the hill. The town has no airport, so you arrive by shuttle from Querétaro or León.

Both are better for crafts than fashion. Puebla centres on one thing, Talavera, which you can buy in workshops where you watch it being painted, alongside El Parián market, weekend antiques on the Callejón de los Sapos and malls for international brands.

San Miguel offers a broader mix of craft and design: tin lanterns and glass in the stepped artisans' market, high-quality folk art and furniture in décor shops, and studios in a former textile mill. It has no big brands at all.

Puebla costs a good deal less. Even comfortable rooms in colonial houses by the zócalo are cheap compared with the capital, and eating and getting around cost little.

San Miguel is one of Mexico's more expensive stops. Its boutique hotels and restaurants around the Jardín are priced for foreign residents and weekenders, and weekends and festivals cost more again. Street food, cantinas and the free pleasure of its streets keep a careful traveller's costs down.

Performance is not a main reason to visit either city, and both have a historic theatre: the Teatro Principal in Puebla and the Teatro Ángela Peralta in San Miguel. Puebla adds the university's cultural complex and the 5 de Mayo festivities. San Miguel has more music day to day for its size, with mariachis on the Jardín every evening, live sets in bars, and long-running chamber music and jazz festivals.

San Miguel is clearly the place to unwind. The naturally hot pools and domed grottoes towards Atotonilco are about fifteen minutes away, and the town is full of day spas, massage studios, temazcales and yoga classes for its resident community.

Puebla offers temazcal sweat lodges around Cholula and the sulphurous pools of Agua Azul, but little more beyond hotel spas. Its calm is found in quiet courtyards and long lunches, and the traffic outside the centre spoils some of that.