Salt Lake City or Winter Park, Colorado?

Neither is a swimming destination, but Salt Lake City gives you a little more to do in the water. You can float in the brine of the Great Salt Lake once for the novelty, then spend hot July days at Wasatch reservoirs such as Jordanelle or Pineview, which have paddleboards and sandy patches of shore.

Winter Park's lakes around Grand Lake and Granby are fed by snowmelt and stay too cold for most swimmers even in midsummer, so water time there means boating, a hotel pool or the hot springs.

Salt Lake City eats noticeably better. Its local quirks, fry sauce, fried scones and the drive-through dirty soda shops, are fun rather than serious, but the Mexican, Pacific Islander, Peruvian and Vietnamese kitchens along State Street, and the breweries and modern restaurants of Downtown and Sugar House, give you real variety across a week.

Winter Park feeds hungry skiers and little more: breakfast burritos before the lifts, green chile and burgers at the lodges, and a few dinner rooms for elk or trout. Busy winter weekends mean booking early, and nothing there is worth travelling for in its own right.

Salt Lake City has a proper sightseeing day or two, built around Temple Square with its granite temple, domed Tabernacle and the Family History Library, then the State Capitol, the painted Cathedral of the Madeleine and the Natural History Museum.

Winter Park has almost nothing in this line. Its history is the Moffat Tunnel railway and a small homesteading museum in Fraser, so anyone wanting museums from there will spend the day driving to Denver.

Both are early-to-bed places, but Salt Lake City at least gives you a choice: bars and breweries downtown and in the Granary District, a few dance clubs, a long-standing gay scene and Sugar House pubs, all within Utah's limits on stronger drinks and late opening.

Winter Park's evenings are après-ski and nothing more, loud at the base village bars when the lifts close and quiet by late evening, with no clubs at all and even calmer summers.

Both are outstanding mountain bases, so the difference is in kind. Salt Lake City sets the dry, deep Wasatch powder of Alta, Snowbird, Brighton and Solitude a short canyon drive from a city, with foothill trails above the Avenues and a completely different landscape to the west: bison on Antelope Island and the white Bonneville Salt Flats.

Winter Park puts you inside the mountains, with Mary Jane's bumps and tree runs from the door, a renowned lift-served bike park and long singletrack around Fraser in summer. It also has the moose and high tundra of Rocky Mountain National Park about an hour north, though storms and cold nights shape the days.

The outings from the two are about as good, but they differ in character. From Salt Lake City the main trip is Park City's Victorian Main Street, with Midway's Swiss-style village, Ogden's 25th Street and the Golden Spike site as smaller extras. Utah's red-rock national parks are too far for a day.

Winter Park's outings depend on the weather, because the high passes decide the day. In good conditions you can reach the mining towns of Georgetown and Idaho Springs, the boardwalk at Grand Lake, and Denver or Boulder for a city day.

Salt Lake City offers children more, from Hogle Zoo, the aquarium, the planetarium and Discovery Gateway to the roller coasters at Lagoon and the ancient-life museum at Thanksgiving Point, in a clean, safe city where large families are normal. The catch is that it is spread across the valley and needs a car.

Winter Park is the simpler package: a big ski school, gentle slopes at the base, tubing and sleigh rides in winter, an alpine slide in summer, and a compact village on foot. Altitude can upset sleep for the first nights, and there is little to do indoors when it rains.

Getting around is equally easy, or awkward, in both, but in different ways. Salt Lake City has a real transit backbone, with TRAX light rail to the airport and FrontRunner trains to Ogden and Provo, yet its huge blocks and sprawling valley push you towards a car, and canyon traffic on powder days can be slow.

Winter Park can be done on its free shuttle and on foot around the base village during a ski week. Lodgings strung along the highway, the trailheads and the drive over Berthoud Pass make a car or shuttle necessary for anything further.

Salt Lake City is the only one of the two where shopping fills an afternoon. City Creek Center has the department stores, Trolley Square fills old streetcar barns with shops, and 9th and 9th and Sugar House have independent and vintage stores, along with excellent local ski and climbing shops.

Winter Park sells rentals, tuning, bike parts and souvenirs, which is useful if you forgot your goggles, but for anything else you go to Denver.

Salt Lake City is the cheaper of the two. Downtown hotels are fairly priced, Temple Square is free and light rail is inexpensive, so costs only climb steeply if you ski and rent a car.

In Winter Park a winter stay is costly all round, from lift tickets and lessons to resort-priced meals, though it is cheaper than Colorado's glamour resorts. Fraser condos with kitchens and summer visits, when the trails cost nothing, bring it down.

The gap here is wide. Salt Lake City has the Tabernacle Choir and daily organ recitals at Temple Square, plus the Utah Symphony at Abravanel Hall, Utah Opera, Ballet West and touring shows at the Eccles Theater, more than you would expect of a city its size.

Winter Park offers free summer concerts on the grass in the town park and the odd band in an après-ski bar, with no theatre or concert hall at all.

Winter Park is the more restful stay. Quiet forest, a hot tub at most condos and the hillside mineral pools of Hot Sulphur Springs half an hour away are part of daily life, and the slower weeks of late spring and autumn are especially peaceful.

Salt Lake City's best soak is the Homestead Crater in Midway, warm water inside a limestone dome about an hour away. Beyond that it has resort spas in Park City and a calm pace, which is pleasant but not a reason to go.