VacationSelector

Alicante or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Alicante
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on sights concentration and museums & heritage 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.

AlicanteWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Alicante leads by 59 points.59
AlicanteWashington DC
Score7718
Swim season months53
Beaches 10 km331
Coast distance1 km34 km
Water distance1 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 11 points.11
AlicanteWashington DC
Score6677
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8671,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3136
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 13 points.13
AlicanteWashington DC
Score4255
Museums within 10 km1483
Museums within 2 km of centre1155
Share of museums within 2 km %7966
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 10 points.10
AlicanteWashington DC
Score5161
Drinking venues within 4 km5911,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre488593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8358
Nightclubs within 4 km5454
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 2 points.2
AlicanteWashington DC
Score4042
Protected land share 50 km %710
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %5994
Park area within 2 km60 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Alicante leads by 4 points.4
AlicanteWashington DC
Score4238
Tourist attractions within 2 km137
Park area within 2 km60 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 50 points.50
AlicanteWashington DC
Score2676
Notable places within 2 km18305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Alicante leads by 28 points.28
AlicanteWashington DC
Score7143
Price level global60.8100
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Alicante leads by 25 points.25
AlicanteWashington DC
Score8762
Monthly daytime high17 °C to 31.1 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall3 mm to 52 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months110
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
Alicante
17
18
20
22
24
28
30
31
29
25
21
18
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Alicante
15
14
15
16
18
22
25
26
25
22
19
16
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Alicante
21
18
25
34
21
8
3
12
52
32
34
23
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Alicante
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Alicante
6
6
8
8
10
10
11
10
8
7
6
6
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Alicante: 1991-2020 normals, Alicante (2.8 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAlicanteWashington DC
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
2 h 25 m
€46-56
ALC · 10 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
2 h 25 m
€102-119
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€62-93
ALC · 10 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 35 m
€150-169
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
2 h 5 m
€85-109
ALC · 10 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€72-86
ALC · 10 km
7 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
DublinDUB
2 h 45 m
€98-122
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
7 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
CopenhagenCPH
3 h 15 m
€110-130
1 stop
ALC · 10 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
EdinburghEDI
3 h 0 m
no fares
ALC · 10 km
7 h 15 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 30 m
no fares
VLC · 127 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
IAD · 37 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. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureAlicanteWashington DC
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation3 m72 m
Main airportAlicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ALC)10 km from centre124 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAlicanteWashington DC
City population366,221689,545
People per km²1,8193,896
Museums within 10 km899
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre5282
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Alicante or Washington DC 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). 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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.