VacationSelector

Belfast or Rotterdam?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Belfast
48
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and nature & day trips with your weighting.

Rotterdam
✓ Best match
54
match

Wins on museums & heritage 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.

BelfastRotterdam
Beaches & swimming. Belfast leads by 11 points.11
BelfastRotterdam
Score4837
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km1022
Coast distance1 km24 km
Water distance1 km24 km
Places to eat. Rotterdam leads by 16 points.16
BelfastRotterdam
Score5672
Restaurants within 2 km of centre432862
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3146
Museums & heritage. Rotterdam leads by 31 points.31
BelfastRotterdam
Score2960
Museums within 10 km1841
Museums within 2 km of centre620
Share of museums within 2 km %3349
Unesco sites within 50 km15
Nightlife. Rotterdam leads by 1 points.1
BelfastRotterdam
Score4849
Drinking venues within 4 km550542
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre348378
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6370
Nightclubs within 4 km2940
Nature & day trips. Belfast leads by 11 points.11
BelfastRotterdam
Score5342
Protected land share 50 km %1910
Landscape blanket share 50 km %130
Land share of disc %6579
Park area within 2 km68 hectares61 hectares
Good for families. Rotterdam leads by 14 points.14
BelfastRotterdam
Score4862
Tourist attractions within 2 km1627
Park area within 2 km68 hectares61 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km28
Sights concentration. Rotterdam leads by 9 points.9
BelfastRotterdam
Score4251
Notable places within 2 km4374
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Rotterdam leads by 4 points.4
BelfastRotterdam
Score5458
Price level global84.979.2
Daily budget—€181
Year-round weather. Rotterdam leads by 5 points.5
BelfastRotterdam
Score5156
Monthly daytime high6.9 °C to 19 °C6.2 °C to 22.1 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 89 mm42 mm to 85 mm
Dry months00
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
Belfast
7
8
10
12
15
18
19
19
17
13
10
7
Rotterdam
6
7
10
14
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Sea temperature, °C
Belfast
9
8
8
8
9
11
12
13
14
14
12
11
Rotterdam
6
5
6
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Rainfall, mm
Belfast
74
62
60
56
55
65
74
86
67
89
87
85
Rotterdam
71
63
58
42
59
71
85
84
78
81
80
84
Daylight, hours per day
Belfast
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Rotterdam
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Belfast
2
2
3
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
2
2
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. Belfast: 1991-2020 normals, Belfast / Aldergrove Airport (19.4 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 fromBelfastRotterdam
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
6 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
7 h 35 m
€512-556
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 0 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
1 h 15 m
€145-187
AMS · 47 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
1 h 10 m
€178-300
AMS · 47 km
MadridMAD
2 h 25 m
€66-101
1 stop
DUB · 132 km
2 h 25 m
€160-183
AMS · 47 km
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 10 m
€86-108
1 stop
DUB · 132 km
1 h 25 m
€171-212
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 15 m
€72-142
BHD · 4 km
1 h 5 m
€159-284
RTM · 5 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
7 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
6 h 45 m
€318-346
1 stop
AMS · 47 km
StockholmARN, BMA, NYO, VST
2 h 35 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
2 h 0 m
€156-208
AMS · 47 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 40 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
AMS · 47 km
CancunCUN
9 h 30 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
10 h 25 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

MeasureBelfastRotterdam
Official languageEnglishDutch
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112 or 911
Elevation3 m10 m
Main airportGeorge Best Belfast City Airport (BHD)4 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsRotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM)5 km from centre45 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBelfastRotterdam
City population345,006664,311
People per km²3,0002,080
Museums within 10 km840
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km15
Distinct cuisines in the centre4477
Swim season, months above 21 °CNoneNone

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Belfast 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). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.