Vancouver or Winnipeg?

Vancouver's beaches are part of the city: English Bay and Sunset Beach in the West End, and the long sands of Kitsilano, Jericho and Spanish Banks looking across to the mountains, all an easy bus or bike ride away for a summer afternoon and a sunset. The sea there is cold, so a swim is a quick dip, and the Kitsilano saltwater pool is the warmer option.

Winnipeg's water is actually milder in midsummer, because shallow Lake Winnipeg warms up well, and Grand Beach has fine white sand and dunes. But it is more than an hour's drive away, the season lasts barely two months and algae can spoil it late in summer, so Vancouver's everyday beaches come out ahead.

Vancouver is well ahead. Cantonese dim sum and seafood in the city and in Richmond, endless ramen and sushi counters, and local salmon, spot prawns and Dungeness crab make eating one of the real reasons to go.

Winnipeg eats honestly rather than memorably. Its Ukrainian and Mennonite settlers left perogies, cabbage rolls and farmer sausage, the city has its own honey dill sauce, and the suburbs have Filipino and Punjabi cooking. The Forks Market is a good place to graze, but the range is narrow next to Vancouver's.

Winnipeg has more sights. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights, the world's largest public collection of contemporary Inuit art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the replica ship Nonsuch at the Manitoba Museum and the terracotta warehouses of the Exchange District give a visitor two or three solid days.

Vancouver's strengths are fewer. The Museum of Anthropology, with its Northwest Coast totem poles and canoes, is outstanding, and Gastown and the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Garden are pleasant, but most visitors come for the setting rather than the sights.

Neither city is a reason to go out, but Vancouver offers more choice: cocktail bars in Gastown, taprooms around Main Street, summer patios in Yaletown and Kitsilano, the Granville Street clubs at weekends, and the gay scene of the Davie Village. Winnipeg has a handful of Exchange District bars and Osborne Village pubs that go quiet early, and in deep winter going out shrinks to a single warm bar.

This is where Vancouver has its biggest advantage. Ski runs and forest trails on Grouse, Cypress and Seymour are under half an hour from downtown, Stanley Park and the seawall are inside the city, and the Sea-to-Sky Highway leads to the granite walls at Squamish and Whistler's alpine country, with orcas and humpbacks in the waters offshore.

Winnipeg's outdoors is gentler and depends more on the season: riverbank paths, the bison herd at FortWhyte Alive, migrating geese at Oak Hammock Marsh and skating trails on the frozen rivers. The lakes and granite of Whiteshell make good canoeing country, but they are a long drive east, and summer brings fierce mosquitoes.

Neither city has many places to visit nearby, but Vancouver's are better. Victoria, with its harbour and Parliament Buildings, is worth the long day with a ferry crossing, and Steveston, Fort Langley, Bowen Island and Whistler's village make shorter outings.

From Winnipeg the choices are the stone fur-trade post at Lower Fort Garry, the Icelandic fishing town of Gimli and the Mennonite Heritage Village at Steinbach. All are pleasant in summer, all need a car, and none is a reason to travel.

Family days are easier in Vancouver. Stanley Park alone has the aquarium, a miniature train, a water park and the flat seawall, and Science World, the little ferries to Granville Island and the suspension bridges over the North Shore canyons add plenty more without a car.

Winnipeg has something Vancouver lacks close to the centre: the Assiniboine Park Zoo, where polar bears swim over an underwater tunnel. The children's museum at The Forks is good too, but in winter most days become drives from one indoor stop to the next.

Vancouver is far easier without a car. The SkyTrain runs from the airport to downtown, the SeaBus crosses to North Vancouver, one card covers both, and the downtown peninsula and the seawall are a pleasure to walk or cycle.

Winnipeg's walkable core of downtown, the Exchange District and The Forks is small, and in winter skywalks link many of its buildings. Beyond it there are only buses, which are slow across town, and FortWhyte, the beaches and every day trip mean renting a car.

Vancouver has more shopping: chains and flagships on Robson Street, luxury houses on Alberni, outdoor and athleisure clothing as a local speciality, plus Granville Island's studios and Richmond's Asian malls. Winnipeg is mostly malls and chain stores, with independent clothing and record shops in the Exchange District and Osborne Village.

The best thing to take home is the same in both cities: Indigenous art. Vancouver has Northwest Coast prints and carvings, and Winnipeg's specialist galleries add Inuit work.

Winnipeg is the cheaper stay. Downtown hotels cost noticeably less than in Vancouver, the main sights are moderately priced, and only the need for a car or taxis beyond the centre pushes the bill up.

Vancouver is expensive to sleep in, especially in summer, and meals get steep once tax and tip are added. There are real savings, though: the seawall, the beaches and Stanley Park are free, dim sum and noodles are cheap, transit is fairly priced and rooms cost less outside summer.

The two cities are about level, and both hold a Fringe and a folk festival in summer. Winnipeg's strength is its resident companies. The Royal Winnipeg Ballet, the oldest in the country, shares the Centennial Concert Hall with the symphony and the opera, and a long-established company in St Boniface performs in French.

Vancouver's evenings depend more on the setting and on visiting shows: the symphony in the ornate 1927 Orpheum, Shakespeare in tents at Bard on the Beach with the mountains behind, a big jazz festival, and touring concerts passing along the West Coast.

Vancouver is the more restful city overall, because calm is part of daily life there: yoga studios, good hotel day spas, massage and reflexology in Chinatown and Richmond, and the seawall and the forest for slow walks. Its large Nordic-style spas, though, are a drive away near Whistler.

Winnipeg has one thing in town that Vancouver lacks, an outdoor Nordic spa in the south of the city, where sitting in hot pools in deep frost makes a memorable afternoon. Apart from that it offers hotel spas, quiet streets and the English garden in Assiniboine Park, but little else built around rest.