VacationSelector

Athens or Rotterdam?

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 sights concentration with your weighting.

Rotterdam
54
match

Wins on places to eat 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.

AthensRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Athens leads by 11 points.11
AthensRotterdam
Score4837
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km1422
Coast distance6 km24 km
Water distance6 km24 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 3 points.3
AthensRotterdam
Score6972
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2546
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 13 points.13
AthensRotterdam
Score7360
Museums within 10 km12241
Museums within 2 km of centre7820
Share of museums within 2 km %6449
Unesco sites within 50 km25
Nightlife. Athens leads by 32 points.32
AthensRotterdam
Score8149
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5070
Nightclubs within 4 km13640
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 3 points.3
AthensRotterdam
Score4542
Protected land share 50 km %510
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5079
Park area within 2 km128 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 9 points.9
AthensRotterdam
Score7162
Tourist attractions within 2 km6827
Park area within 2 km128 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km18
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 24 points.24
AthensRotterdam
Score7551
Notable places within 2 km29174
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 16 points.16
AthensRotterdam
Score7458
Price level global55.879.2
Daily budget€125€181
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 18 points.18
AthensRotterdam
Score7456
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm42 mm to 85 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
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Rotterdam
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
Rotterdam
2
3
5
6
7
7
7
6
5
4
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). Rotterdam: 1993-2020 (sunshine 1991-2020, rainfall 1991-2020) normals, Rotterdam Airport Zestienhoven (3.9 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensRotterdam
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
3 h 30 m
€156-172
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
CopenhagenCPH
3 h 10 m
€152-215
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
DublinDUB
4 h 5 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 35 m
€69-96
AMS · 47 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 30 m
€286-308
ATH · 20 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ManchesterMAN
3 h 45 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
3 h 35 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
10 h 45 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 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

MeasureAthensRotterdam
Official languageGreekDutch
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 or 911
Elevation74 m10 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensRotterdam
City population643,452664,311
People per km²16,4992,080
Museums within 10 km8840
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km25
Distinct cuisines in the centre8277
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 Rotterdam 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.