San Francisco or Snowbird?

You cannot really swim at either, but San Francisco at least has a shoreline worth visiting. There are long walks on Ocean Beach, Baker Beach sits under the Golden Gate Bridge, and China Beach is a sheltered cove, though fog, rip currents and the cold Pacific keep people out of the water.

Snowbird has no shore at all. Swimming there means the resort's heated pools or a drive to cold reservoirs in the Heber Valley, and the Great Salt Lake is something to look at rather than swim in.

This is one of the widest gaps between the two. San Francisco is worth visiting for its food alone: Northern California produce, bay seafood and sourdough, Cantonese cooking in Chinatown and the Richmond, Italian bakeries in North Beach, taquerias in the Mission and a fine-dining scene among the best in the country.

At Snowbird you eat at the resort, which means lodge restaurants, the dining room at the top of the tram, cafeterias and après-ski burgers. It is perfectly good fuel for a ski day, but most guests drive forty minutes down to Salt Lake City once or twice a week for more variety.

San Francisco gives a visitor three or four full days of sightseeing. There are the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the cable cars on Nob Hill and the Victorian houses of Alamo Square, along with a strong set of museums from SFMOMA to the Legion of Honor.

Snowbird has nothing comparable. It is a resort built from scratch in 1971, its concrete lodges are its only architecture, and little of the canyon's mining past survives to see. The nearest culture is down in Salt Lake City, at Temple Square and the city's museums.

After dark the two could hardly be further apart. San Francisco's night is spread across several districts: mezcal and cocktail bars along Valencia Street in the Mission, old saloons in North Beach, the bars of the Castro and the warehouse clubs of SoMa. Bars stop serving at 2am, and some neighbourhoods are quiet on weeknights.

Snowbird's night out is the après-ski hour, on a sunny deck and in a couple of lodge bars. After that, people head to dinner and then bed before the first tram, and anyone who wants more has to drive the mountain road to Salt Lake City or Park City.

Both are outdoor places, and Snowbird is the more dramatic of the two. Its tram climbs to Hidden Peak at about 3,350m, the canyon gets some of the deepest dry snow in North America, and in summer trails lead into the Lone Peak wilderness and the wildflower meadows of Albion Basin.

San Francisco's nature sits at sea level, right beside the city. Within the city there are the cliff trail at Lands End, the Presidio and Golden Gate Park, and across the bridge lie the Marin Headlands, the redwoods of Muir Woods and Point Reyes. That is outstanding for a city, but it means coastal walking and cycling, often in fog, rather than high mountains.

San Francisco has more to choose from. Napa and Sonoma are about an hour north, ferries cross to Sausalito and Tiburon, and the coast road leads south to Santa Cruz, the aquarium at Monterey and the mission at Carmel.

From Snowbird the list is shorter. Salt Lake City with Temple Square and Park City with its Victorian Main Street are the main outings, and Midway, Sundance and Ogden make smaller ones, with mostly open country beyond. Every one of them starts with the drive down the canyon.

With younger children, the city is the easier choice, and it works in any season. The Exploratorium can fill a whole day, the California Academy of Sciences has an aquarium and a planetarium, and there are sea lions at Fisherman's Wharf and cable cars to ride. The drawbacks are the steep hills with a pushchair and a sea too cold for paddling.

Snowbird works best for families who already ski, and mostly for teenagers and confident young skiers, because the terrain is steep. The car-free base is easy to manage with children, and summer adds a mountain coaster and an alpine slide. However, the altitude can tire small children, and the zoo and children's museums are down in Salt Lake City.

San Francisco is compact and well served. Muni, BART, streetcars, cable cars and ferries all take one Clipper card, so you do not need a car, though the hills turn some short walks into climbs.

Snowbird is easy to get around inside the resort, where the lodges and lifts are a short walk apart on a car-free base. Everything beyond depends on a single winding canyon road that jams on powder mornings and can close for avalanche control. In practice you need a car or a shuttle for anything off the mountain.

San Francisco is a pleasant place to browse. There are the department stores of Union Square, design boutiques in Hayes Valley, vintage shops on Valencia Street and in Haight-Ashbury, and food from the Ferry Building to take home.

Snowbird has only a few stores at the base selling ski gear, goggles and resort clothing. For real shopping you go to the malls in Salt Lake City or the main street in Park City.

Both are expensive, so the real difference is where the money goes. In San Francisco it goes on hotel rooms and on restaurant bills with tax and tipping added. You can soften that with cheap taquerias and dim sum, free parks and coastal trails, and museum free days.

At Snowbird the big costs are lift tickets, slopeside rooms, ski rental and resort meals. Passes that cover several resorts help, sleeping in Salt Lake City and driving up saves a good deal, and summer is noticeably cheaper than winter.

San Francisco has full seasons of opera, ballet and symphony at the Civic Center, plus serious drama, touring musicals, jazz at the SFJAZZ Center, rock at the Fillmore and free summer concerts in Stern Grove.

Snowbird offers summer concerts on the plaza, oompah bands at its Oktoberfest and the occasional band at après-ski. For anything more, the stages are in Salt Lake City.

Neither has a bathing tradition, and they offer about the same amount of calm, in different forms. San Francisco's is urban: the Japanese-style bathhouse in Japantown, day spas, yoga studios and the Japanese Tea Garden, with Calistoga's mud baths about two hours away. The city centre itself can feel hectic.

Snowbird's version is the rooftop spa on the main lodge, with pools and hot tubs looking out at the canyon walls after a day on the slopes, followed by quiet, dark nights. The warm mineral crater at Homestead in Midway is its local answer to Calistoga.