VacationSelector

Athens or Bilbao?

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

Your match

Athens
✓ Best match
68
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.

Bilbao
54
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

AthensBilbao
Beaches & swimming. Athens leads by 17 points.17
AthensBilbao
Score4831
Swim season months51
Beaches 10 km141
Coast distance6 km0 km
Water distance6 km0 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 7 points.7
AthensBilbao
Score6962
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431840
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2526
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 35 points.35
AthensBilbao
Score7338
Museums within 10 km12225
Museums within 2 km of centre7812
Share of museums within 2 km %6448
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Athens leads by 23 points.23
AthensBilbao
Score8158
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718869
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354730
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5084
Nightclubs within 4 km13650
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 8 points.8
AthensBilbao
Score4553
Protected land share 50 km %511
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5070
Park area within 2 km128 hectares119 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 24 points.24
AthensBilbao
Score7147
Tourist attractions within 2 km6817
Park area within 2 km128 hectares119 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 23 points.23
AthensBilbao
Score7552
Notable places within 2 km29179
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 3 points.3
AthensBilbao
Score7471
Price level global55.860.8
Daily budget€125€122
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 4 points.4
AthensBilbao
Score7470
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C13.5 °C to 26.3 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm53 mm to 170 mm
Dry months70
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
Athens
13
14
17
21
27
32
34
35
30
24
19
15
Bilbao
14
14
17
18
21
24
25
26
25
21
17
14
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Athens: 1991-2020 normals, Athens / Athenai / Pláka (2.2 km from centre). Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensBilbao
MadridMAD
3 h 30 m
€156-172
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 55 m
€134-222
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
€214-254
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€174-212
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€202-223
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 5 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
MarrakechRAK
4 h 10 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
2 h 15 m
no fares
BIO · 5 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 2026-09 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

MeasureAthensBilbao
Official languageGreekSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation74 m19 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensBilbao
City population643,452351,124
People per km²16,4998,440
Museums within 10 km8817
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre8254
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months1 month

Where else could you go?

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

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.