San Jose or South Lake Tahoe?

San Jose has no beach of its own. Santa Cruz and Capitola lie over the Santa Cruz Mountains, and they are sunny and pleasant, but the Pacific there is cold enough to keep most visitors in wetsuits or on the sand.

South Lake Tahoe has Pope, Baldwin and Nevada beaches on the edge of town, with turquoise water over white sand. The lake is cold too, but in July and August the shallows warm up enough for a real swim, which the coast near San Jose rarely allows.

San Jose is the better place to eat, provided you are willing to drive. Its large Vietnamese community fills the strip malls of the east side with pho and banh mi, and there are taquerias and Indian and Korean kitchens along the roads towards Santa Clara and Sunnyvale.

South Lake Tahoe serves resort food: casino steakhouses and buffets, and brewpubs and pizza along Highway 50. The beer from small local breweries is the one thing worth seeking out. Many visitors end up cooking in their cabin, which would be a waste in San Jose.

Neither city is a culture destination, but San Jose gives you a couple of days of indoor sights: the Winchester Mystery House, the antiquities of the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, Mission Santa Clara and the Computer History Museum, which tells Silicon Valley's own story. South Lake Tahoe has the Tallac estates by the shore and Vikingsholm at the head of Emerald Bay, which fill a morning between hikes, and very little beyond them.

Both are quiet after dark, but in different ways. San Jose's evenings centre on the beer halls and covered market of San Pedro Square and the cocktail and dive bars of SoFA. That makes a short bar crawl that is lively at weekends and winds down well before the small hours.

South Lake Tahoe has less to choose from but stays up later, because the casino floors and lounges at Stateline never close. On the California side it is après-ski at the gondola base and then an early night. For a big night out, people in San Jose head to San Francisco and people in Tahoe head to Reno.

San Jose's hills are a real asset. The redwoods of Big Basin and Henry Cowell, the foothill trails of Alum Rock and the sea otters of Monterey Bay are all within reach by car.

South Lake Tahoe is in another league. The lake, Emerald Bay and the granite basins of the Desolation Wilderness begin minutes from town, and the Tahoe Rim Trail circles the ridges. Winter adds deep snow and skiing at Heavenly, Kirkwood and Sierra-at-Tahoe. Here the landscape is the trip itself, not an outing from it.

San Jose is the better base for day trips. San Francisco is about an hour away by Caltrain, and Stanford and Palo Alto are much closer. Berkeley and Oakland, across the bay, take about as long as the city. To the south, Santa Cruz, Monterey and Carmel make full days on the coast, and Napa and Sonoma are within reach if the traffic allows.

From South Lake Tahoe the choice is narrower and more about history: Gold Rush and silver-boom towns such as Virginia City, Genoa and Coloma, the Amador wineries, and Reno if you want a bigger casino city. They fill a day of poor weather well, but they are not a reason to come.

San Jose has more that is built for children: Great America in Santa Clara, the small zoo at Happy Hollow and a discovery museum downtown. The Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Santa Cruz boardwalk are within a drive, so there is a plan for every kind of day.

South Lake Tahoe works well for active families. Summer brings shallow lake beaches and bike paths, and winter brings ski schools and sledding hills. There is no zoo, aquarium or theme park, though, so a stormy day leaves little to do, and the casino strip at Stateline is not a place for children to linger.

In both places a car does most of the work, but for different reasons. San Jose has a walkable downtown, light rail running north to south and Caltrain to San Francisco. The sights, malls and parks, however, are spread across a valley of freeways that jam at rush hour.

South Lake Tahoe's walkable part is the few blocks around Stateline and the gondola, with free shuttles to the ski areas in winter. Beyond that, summer weekend traffic crawls along the road around Emerald Bay, and in winter snow brings chain controls on the passes, so carry chains and leave extra time.

San Jose is the place to shop. The large mall on the west side and the open-air boutique street beside it carry most international and luxury brands, and Los Gatos, Willow Glen and the Asian plazas are good for browsing. In South Lake Tahoe, shopping means ski rentals, outdoor gear, souvenirs at the gondola base and a trip to the supermarket for the cabin.

San Jose sits in one of the most expensive regions in the United States. Hotels are priced for business travel, restaurant and parking bills are high, and a hire car is hard to avoid. Cheaper hotel rates at weekends and the suburban Vietnamese and Mexican eateries help a little.

South Lake Tahoe is expensive at peak times too, in the ski weeks, on long weekends and in high summer, but it gives you more ways round the cost. Casino hotels on the Nevada side discount midweek and in spring and autumn, a cabin kitchen cuts food bills, and the trails and beaches are free, which can bring a trip down further than San Jose allows.

San Jose has a proper arts season, if a modest one. Opera San José performs in the restored California Theatre, the symphony and touring Broadway shows play at the Center for the Performing Arts, big touring acts come to the arena and a long-running jazz festival takes over downtown in summer.

South Lake Tahoe's stages are mostly casino showrooms with touring rock and country acts, comedians and tribute shows. Summer evenings are its best time, with Shakespeare on the beach at Sand Harbor and concerts at the Tallac estates, but there is no opera or classical season.

Relaxing in San Jose happens mostly indoors: hotel and day spas, Korean-style bathhouses with saunas, and an hour of calm in the Japanese gardens at Hakone or Kelley Park. The city itself runs on the working week.

South Lake Tahoe is the more restful choice, mostly because of its setting: quiet mornings by the lake and cabins in the pines. There are also natural hot springs within reach, at Grover Hot Springs in an alpine meadow and in the Carson Valley over the pass, and San Jose has nothing to match them.