VacationSelector

Aarhus or Ottawa?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Too close to call, 1 point apart

Aarhus
44
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Ottawa
43
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

AarhusOttawa
Beaches & swimming. Aarhus leads by 59 points.59
AarhusOttawa
Score590
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km289
Coast distance0 km423 km
Water distance0 km—
Places to eat. Ottawa leads by 11 points.11
AarhusOttawa
Score5364
Restaurants within 2 km of centre427684
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2634
Museums & heritage. Aarhus leads by 6 points.6
AarhusOttawa
Score3832
Museums within 10 km2615
Museums within 2 km of centre208
Share of museums within 2 km %7753
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Ottawa leads by 4 points.4
AarhusOttawa
Score4044
Drinking venues within 4 km382432
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre330303
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8670
Nightclubs within 4 km1535
Nature & day trips. Ottawa leads by 13 points.13
AarhusOttawa
Score2841
Protected land share 50 km %28
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %68100
Park area within 2 km72 hectares122 hectares
Good for families. Ottawa leads by 13 points.13
AarhusOttawa
Score3346
Tourist attractions within 2 km611
Park area within 2 km72 hectares122 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Ottawa leads by 13 points.13
AarhusOttawa
Score3750
Notable places within 2 km3371
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Ottawa leads by 2 points.2
AarhusOttawa
Score5254
Price level global87.884
Daily budget€214—
Year-round weather. Aarhus and Ottawa are level on 53.
AarhusOttawa
Score5353
Monthly daytime high3.7 °C to 21.6 °C-4.9 °C to 27 °C
Monthly rainfall33 mm to 74 mm53 mm to 94 mm
Dry months30
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Aarhus
4
4
7
12
16
19
22
21
17
12
8
5
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Sea temperature, °C
Aarhus
3
2
3
6
11
15
17
18
15
12
8
5
Ottawa
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Aarhus
51
37
36
33
46
64
62
74
66
68
55
50
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Daylight, hours per day
Aarhus
8
10
12
14
16
18
17
15
13
11
8
7
Ottawa
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Aarhus: 1991-2020 normals, Tirstrup (29.8 km from centre). Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAarhusOttawa
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
no fares
AAR · 30 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
BLL · 80 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it.

Before you go

MeasureAarhusOttawa
Official languageDanishFrench, English
CurrencyDanish Krone (DKK)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsCEFK230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation6 m70 m
Main airportAarhus Airport (AAR)30 km from centre14 non-stop destinationsOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAarhusOttawa
City population290,5981,017,449
People per km²3,193366
Museums within 10 km1720
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre3762
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone–

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Aarhus or Ottawa somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.