San Jose or Sonoma?

San Jose has the better beach days, though neither place suits a beach vacation. About 45 minutes over the Santa Cruz Mountains, it reaches Santa Cruz, Capitola and the sheltered coves of the northern Monterey Bay. These are real beach towns with sunny sand, but the water is too cold for most people to swim without a wetsuit.

From Sonoma the coast at Bodega Bay is well over an hour away. It is a shore of cliffs, cold water and dangerous currents, made for looking at rather than swimming. The nearest place for a summer swim is a gravel beach on the Russian River.

Sonoma comes out ahead for food, though in a narrower way. Here the eating is the point. Tasting rooms surround the plaza, Carneros Pinot Noir and old-vine Zinfandel come from a short drive away, and the seasonal cooking is built on local cheese, olive oil and coastal oysters. It is ideal for a long lunch with a good bottle.

San Jose offers more variety but less pleasure in getting to it. It has excellent pho and banh mi in Little Saigon, as well as taquerias, Korean and Indian restaurants and old family places in Japantown. Most of these sit in suburban strip malls, though, so you need a car to find them.

San Jose has a little more to see, and it is stranger. The Winchester Mystery House, the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum and the Computer History Museum in Mountain View are all well worth a visit, and together they fill a couple of days.

Sonoma has less, but what it has hangs together better. Its large plaza, where the Bear Flag Revolt took place in 1846, is lined by the last Franciscan mission, the adobe barracks and General Vallejo's house nearby. That makes a pleasant half day of history.

San Jose wins easily here, even though its scene is modest. San Pedro Square fills up around arena games and concerts. On weekends the SoFA district on South First Street has cocktail bars, dive bars and a few dance clubs.

Sonoma has no clubs at all. Its evenings are dinner followed by a glass at a wine bar or saloon on the plaza, and the town is quiet by late evening.

Both are strong for the outdoors, but the landscapes differ. San Jose covers more ground. It has redwood groves at Big Basin and Henry Cowell, ridge trails at Castle Rock, the road up Mount Hamilton to the Lick Observatory, and sea otters and whales in the Monterey Bay. Nearly all of it needs a car.

In Sonoma the landscape starts at the edge of town. Trails climb from the plaza to the Sonoma Overlook, quiet roads run through the vineyards for cycling, and balloons rise over the valley at dawn. Sugarloaf Ridge and Point Reyes are both within easy reach.

San Jose has slightly more variety. Caltrain reaches San Francisco without a car, Stanford and Berkeley add a university day, and Santa Cruz, Monterey and Carmel bring the coast and its missions. Napa and Sonoma are further off.

Sonoma is about an hour's drive from San Francisco and closer still to Sausalito and Petaluma. Its other outings, such as Napa, Healdsburg and the valleys around them, tend to be another wine town.

San Jose is much the better choice with children. It has a theme park next door in Santa Clara, a small zoo and play park for younger children, and an IMAX dome downtown. The Monterey Bay Aquarium and the boardwalk rides at Santa Cruz make good day outings, and suburban hotels with pools make the logistics easy.

Sonoma is calm and safe, but its days are built around tasting and lunch. For children there is the plaza playground, a miniature railway and an African wildlife park near Santa Rosa.

Both depend on the car, but San Jose has a few more options. Its light rail runs north to south, Caltrain is a reliable link up the Peninsula, and the flat downtown is easy to walk. Its buses are slow, though, and freeway traffic at rush hour needs planning around.

In Sonoma you can walk between the plaza tasting rooms. Beyond that, visitors hire a driver or join a tour for winery days, which also means nobody has to drive after the wine.

For shopping with a list, San Jose is the better bet. Its west-side mall and the open-air street beside it gather the big international and luxury labels together, so one afternoon can cover clothes, shoes and anything left behind at home. What it lacks is character. Apart from the boutiques of Willow Glen and Los Gatos, a few old Japantown shops and the Asian supermarkets, there is no old shopping street to wander.

Sonoma works the other way round. There are no chains or department stores, just small boutiques, galleries and kitchen shops around the plaza, and the best things to buy are things to eat and drink: cheese, olive oil and bottles carried home from the tasting room where you tried them. It is a place to pick up gifts, not to buy new clothes.

Neither is cheap, but San Jose is the gentler of the two. Its business hotels often cost less at weekends, the Vietnamese and Mexican eateries in suburban plazas are still fair value, and its trails and parks are free.

Sonoma has few rooms, priced for wine-country weekends, and tasting fees quickly add to restaurant bills. That is why budget travellers often stay in Santa Rosa or Petaluma instead.

San Jose has the steadier arts calendar. Opera San José performs in the restored California Theatre, and the symphony and touring Broadway shows share a downtown performing arts centre. Big tours play the arena, and the summer jazz festival brings stages to the streets.

Sonoma's season is mostly summer: shows outdoors among the oaks at Jack London park and concerts at wineries. The Green Music Center, half an hour away, adds serious classical music. For opera or theatre, people from both places head to San Francisco.

Sonoma is clearly the better place to unwind. Hot mineral water has drawn visitors to the resort pools at Boyes Hot Springs for over a century, and day passes are sold to non-guests. Calistoga's mud baths are an hour away, and the town's slow, quiet pace does the rest.

In San Jose, wellness means hotel spas and Korean-style bathhouses in the surrounding towns. An hour in the Japanese gardens at Hakone or Kelley Park is the nearest thing to calm.