VacationSelector

Athens or San Diego?

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 sights concentration and nightlife with your weighting.

San Diego
58
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and year-round weather 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.

AthensSan Diego
Beaches & swimming. San Diego leads by 15 points.15
AthensSan Diego
Score4863
Swim season months51
Beaches 10 km1442
Coast distance6 km1 km
Water distance6 km1 km
Places to eat. Athens leads by 6 points.6
AthensSan Diego
Score6963
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,431823
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2527
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 29 points.29
AthensSan Diego
Score7344
Museums within 10 km12259
Museums within 2 km of centre7830
Share of museums within 2 km %6451
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Athens leads by 31 points.31
AthensSan Diego
Score8150
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718615
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354408
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5066
Nightclubs within 4 km13631
Nature & day trips. San Diego leads by 10 points.10
AthensSan Diego
Score4555
Protected land share 50 km %56
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5052
Park area within 2 km128 hectares308 hectares
Good for families. San Diego leads by 4 points.4
AthensSan Diego
Score7175
Tourist attractions within 2 km6840
Park area within 2 km128 hectares308 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km13
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 35 points.35
AthensSan Diego
Score7540
Notable places within 2 km29140
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 31 points.31
AthensSan Diego
Score7443
Price level global55.8100
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. San Diego leads by 14 points.14
AthensSan Diego
Score7488
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C18.6 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm0 mm to 56 mm
Dry months79
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
San Diego
19
19
19
20
21
22
24
25
25
23
21
19
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
San Diego
15
15
16
16
17
19
20
21
21
19
18
16
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
San Diego
50
56
37
17
7
1
2
0
3
13
20
42
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
San Diego
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
San Diego
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). San Diego: 1991-2020 normals, San Diego International Airport (2.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensSan Diego
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
5 h 15 m
€299-455
1 stop
SAN · 3 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
BostonBOS, PSM
9 h 40 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
5 h 35 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
11 h 0 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
3 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
12 h 30 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
MunichMUC
2 h 25 m
€214-254
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
12 h 5 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 15 m
€202-223
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
11 h 15 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
10 h 25 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
4 h 55 m
no fares
SAN · 3 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
10 h 15 m
€634
ATH · 20 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
SAN · 3 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

MeasureAthensSan Diego
Official languageGreek
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC-8, UTC-7 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation74 m129 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsSan Diego International Airport (SAN)3 km from centre87 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensSan Diego
City population643,4521,386,932
People per km²16,4991,438
Museums within 10 km8826
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre8244
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 San Diego 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.