VacationSelector

Athens or Seattle?

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 value for money with your weighting.

Seattle
52
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and 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.

AthensSeattle
Beaches & swimming. Seattle leads by 12 points.12
AthensSeattle
Score4860
Swim season months50
Beaches 10 km14100
Coast distance6 km1 km
Water distance6 km1 km
Places to eat. Seattle leads by 6 points.6
AthensSeattle
Score6975
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4311,460
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2535
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 37 points.37
AthensSeattle
Score7336
Museums within 10 km12228
Museums within 2 km of centre7817
Share of museums within 2 km %6461
Unesco sites within 50 km20
Nightlife. Athens leads by 24 points.24
AthensSeattle
Score8157
Drinking venues within 4 km2,718873
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,354696
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5080
Nightclubs within 4 km13634
Nature & day trips. Athens leads by 5 points.5
AthensSeattle
Score4540
Protected land share 50 km %59
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5080
Park area within 2 km128 hectares63 hectares
Good for families. Athens leads by 25 points.25
AthensSeattle
Score7146
Tourist attractions within 2 km6817
Park area within 2 km128 hectares63 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 23 points.23
AthensSeattle
Score7552
Notable places within 2 km29176
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 31 points.31
AthensSeattle
Score7443
Price level global55.8100
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 13 points.13
AthensSeattle
Score7461
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C7.8 °C to 24.9 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm15 mm to 160 mm
Dry months73
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
Seattle
8
10
12
15
19
21
25
25
22
15
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Seattle
8
8
8
9
10
11
12
12
11
10
9
9
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Seattle
147
96
106
81
48
37
15
25
41
99
160
147
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Seattle
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Seattle
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). Seattle: 1991-2020 normals, Seattle-Tacoma Airport (17.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensSeattle
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
5 h 15 m
€300-424
SEA · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
12 h 10 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
10 h 10 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€174-212
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
10 h 20 m
€554-583
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
10 h 25 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
5 h 0 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
11 h 0 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
3 h 55 m
€257-317
1 stop
SEA · 18 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 40 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
10 h 30 m
no fares
SEA · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
4 h 30 m
€286-308
ATH · 20 km
14 h 40 m
€1,006-1077
2 stops
SEA · 18 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

MeasureAthensSeattle
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 m40 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsSeattle–Tacoma International Airport (SEA)18 km from centre135 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensSeattle
City population643,452737,015
People per km²16,4991,996
Museums within 10 km8827
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km20
Distinct cuisines in the centre8278
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 Seattle 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.