VacationSelector

Belfast or Thessaloniki?

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 good for families and places to eat with your weighting.

Thessaloniki
✓ Best match
59
match

Wins on year-round weather and museums & heritage 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.

BelfastThessaloniki
Beaches & swimming. Thessaloniki leads by 7 points.7
BelfastThessaloniki
Score4855
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km104
Coast distance1 km0 km
Water distance1 km0 km
Places to eat. Belfast leads by 6 points.6
BelfastThessaloniki
Score5650
Restaurants within 2 km of centre432640
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3115
Museums & heritage. Thessaloniki leads by 20 points.20
BelfastThessaloniki
Score2949
Museums within 10 km1834
Museums within 2 km of centre622
Share of museums within 2 km %3365
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Thessaloniki leads by 19 points.19
BelfastThessaloniki
Score4867
Drinking venues within 4 km5501,407
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre348805
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6357
Nightclubs within 4 km2961
Nature & day trips. Thessaloniki leads by 12 points.12
BelfastThessaloniki
Score5365
Protected land share 50 km %1925
Landscape blanket share 50 km %130
Land share of disc %6583
Park area within 2 km68 hectares39 hectares
Good for families. Belfast leads by 7 points.7
BelfastThessaloniki
Score4841
Tourist attractions within 2 km1616
Park area within 2 km68 hectares39 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Thessaloniki leads by 14 points.14
BelfastThessaloniki
Score4256
Notable places within 2 km4398
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Thessaloniki leads by 20 points.20
BelfastThessaloniki
Score5474
Price level global84.955.8
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. Thessaloniki leads by 21 points.21
BelfastThessaloniki
Score5172
Monthly daytime high6.9 °C to 19 °C9.7 °C to 32.1 °C
Monthly rainfall55 mm to 89 mm21 mm to 56 mm
Dry months09
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
Thessaloniki
10
11
15
19
25
30
32
32
27
21
16
11
Sea temperature, °C
Belfast
9
8
8
8
9
11
12
13
14
14
12
11
Thessaloniki
14
13
13
15
19
23
26
27
25
21
18
15
Rainfall, mm
Belfast
74
62
60
56
55
65
74
86
67
89
87
85
Thessaloniki
35
32
38
36
44
30
23
21
33
41
38
56
Daylight, hours per day
Belfast
8
10
12
14
16
17
17
15
13
11
9
7
Thessaloniki
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Belfast
2
2
3
5
6
5
5
5
4
3
2
2
Thessaloniki
4
4
6
6
9
11
11
10
8
6
4
3

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). Thessaloniki: 1991-2020 normals, Thessaloniki Airport (14 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBelfastThessaloniki
AthensATH
4 h 5 m
no fares
DUB · 132 km
1 h 0 m
€97-118
SKG · 14 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 15 m
€72-142
BHD · 4 km
3 h 15 m
€95-156
SKG · 14 km
ManchesterMAN
1 h 0 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
3 h 25 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
KrakowKRK
2 h 50 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
1 h 55 m
€108-147
SKG · 14 km
DusseldorfDUS, NRN
1 h 45 m
€133-185
1 stop
DUB · 132 km
2 h 40 m
€127-199
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
HeraklionHER
4 h 30 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
SKG · 14 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 40 m
no fares
BFS · 20 km
1 h 50 m
€125-175
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
LarnacaLCA
5 h 5 m
€179-224
2 stops
BFS · 20 km
2 h 0 m
€105-145
SKG · 14 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 35 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
2 h 55 m
€225-285
1 stop
SKG · 14 km
EdinburghEDI
55 m
no fares
BHD · 4 km
3 h 40 m
no fares
SKG · 14 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

MeasureBelfastThessaloniki
Official languageEnglishGreek
CurrencyPound Sterling (GBP)Euro (EUR)
SocketsG230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC, UTC+1 in summerUTC+2, UTC+3 in summer
Emergency number112 or 999112
Elevation3 m6 m
Main airportGeorge Best Belfast City Airport (BHD)4 km from centre24 non-stop destinationsThessaloniki Macedonia International Airport (SKG)14 km from centre88 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year10 days15 days

By the numbers

MeasureBelfastThessaloniki
City population345,006309,617
People per km²3,00016,042
Museums within 10 km831
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre4445
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone5 months

Where else could you go?

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