VacationSelector

Athens or Galway?

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 nightlife and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Galway
39
match

Wins on nature & day trips 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.

AthensGalway
Beaches & swimming. Galway leads by 3 points.3
AthensGalway
Score4851
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km1413
Coast distance6 km1 km
Water distance6 km1 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 32 points.32
AthensGalway
Score6937
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431173
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2520
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 53 points.53
AthensGalway
Score7320
Museums within 10 km1225
Museums within 2 km of centre785
Share of museums within 2 km %64100
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Athens leads by 55 points.55
AthensGalway
Score8126
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718185
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354153
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5083
Nightclubs within 4 km1368
Nature & day trips. Galway leads by 10 points.10
AthensGalway
Score4555
Protected land share 50 km %5
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5085
Park area within 2 km128 hectares65 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 46 points.46
AthensGalway
Score7125
Tourist attractions within 2 km685
Park area within 2 km128 hectares65 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km10
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 53 points.53
AthensGalway
Score7522
Notable places within 2 km29114
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 17 points.17
AthensGalway
Score7457
Price level global55.880.2
Daily budget€125€187
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 20 points.20
AthensGalway
Score7454
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C8.9 °C to 19.6 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm63 mm to 113 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
Galway
9
10
11
14
16
19
20
19
18
14
11
9
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Galway
9
9
9
10
12
14
16
16
15
14
12
10
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Galway
100
87
76
63
63
72
76
89
77
101
104
113
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Galway
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Galway
2
2
4
5
6
5
4
5
4
3
2
2

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). Galway: 1991-2020 normals, Shannon Airport (64.2 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensGalway
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
6 h 30 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
DublinDUB
4 h 5 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 0 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
BostonBOS, PSM
9 h 40 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
6 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€174-212
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
KIR · 125 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
2 h 25 m
€71-91
ATH · 20 km
2 h 30 m
no fares
NOC · 73 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
3 h 0 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
ManchesterMAN
3 h 45 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
SNN · 64 km
WroclawWRO
2 h 30 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
2 h 45 m
no fares
SNN · 64 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

MeasureAthensGalway
Official languageGreekEnglish, Irish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzG230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC, UTC+1 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation74 m25 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsShannon Airport (SNN)64 km from centre36 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensGalway
City population643,45283,456
People per km²16,4991,563
Museums within 10 km884
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre8225
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 monthsNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Athens or Galway 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.