VacationSelector

Athens or Chicago?

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 value for money and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Chicago
56
match

Wins on places to eat and beaches & swimming 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.

AthensChicago
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 5 points.5
AthensChicago
Score4853
Swim season months51
Beaches 10 km1412
Coast distance6 km10,000 km
Water distance6 km1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 12 points.12
AthensChicago
Score6981
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4312,147
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2537
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 27 points.27
AthensChicago
Score7346
Museums within 10 km12245
Museums within 2 km of centre7820
Share of museums within 2 km %6444
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Athens leads by 19 points.19
AthensChicago
Score8162
Drinking venues within 4 km2,7181,123
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354728
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5065
Nightclubs within 4 km13651
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 7 points.7
AthensChicago
Score4538
Protected land share 50 km %56
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %50100
Park area within 2 km128 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 16 points.16
AthensChicago
Score7155
Tourist attractions within 2 km6818
Park area within 2 km128 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 5 points.5
AthensChicago
Score7570
Notable places within 2 km291217
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 31 points.31
AthensChicago
Score7443
Price level global55.8100
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 17 points.17
AthensChicago
Score7457
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C0.2 °C to 29.4 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm54 mm to 121 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
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Chicago
10
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
Chicago
No sunshine record

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). Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensChicago
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
10 h 15 m
€634
ATH · 20 km
1 h 30 m
€189-423
ORD · 25 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 5 m
€125-147
ATH · 20 km
12 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
11 h 25 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 50 m
€141-200
ORD · 25 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
BostonBOS, PSM
9 h 40 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
2 h 20 m
€220-252
ORD · 25 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€71-91
ATH · 20 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 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

MeasureAthensChicago
Official languageGreek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC-6, UTC-5 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation74 m179 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensChicago
City population643,4522,746,388
People per km²16,4994,529
Museums within 10 km8843
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre8287
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 Chicago 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.