VacationSelector

Bilbao or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Bilbao
54
match

Wins on value for money and beaches & swimming with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

BilbaoWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Bilbao leads by 13 points.13
BilbaoWashington DC
Score3118
Swim season months13
Beaches 10 km11
Coast distance0 km34 km
Water distance0 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 15 points.15
BilbaoWashington DC
Score6277
Restaurants within 2 km of centre8401,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2636
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 17 points.17
BilbaoWashington DC
Score3855
Museums within 10 km2583
Museums within 2 km of centre1255
Share of museums within 2 km %4866
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 3 points.3
BilbaoWashington DC
Score5861
Drinking venues within 4 km8691,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre730593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8458
Nightclubs within 4 km5054
Nature & day trips. Bilbao leads by 11 points.11
BilbaoWashington DC
Score5342
Protected land share 50 km %1110
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %7094
Park area within 2 km119 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Bilbao leads by 9 points.9
BilbaoWashington DC
Score4738
Tourist attractions within 2 km177
Park area within 2 km119 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 24 points.24
BilbaoWashington DC
Score5276
Notable places within 2 km79305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bilbao leads by 28 points.28
BilbaoWashington DC
Score7143
Price level global60.8100
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Bilbao leads by 8 points.8
BilbaoWashington DC
Score7062
Monthly daytime high13.5 °C to 26.3 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall53 mm to 170 mm65 mm to 108 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
Bilbao
14
14
17
18
21
24
25
26
25
21
17
14
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Bilbao
13
13
13
13
15
18
21
22
20
18
16
14
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Bilbao
131
108
98
96
76
58
54
53
75
112
170
124
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Bilbao
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Bilbao
3
3
5
5
6
6
6
6
5
4
3
3
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bilbao: 1991-2020 normals, Bilbao / Sondica (4.1 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBilbaoWashington DC
MadridMAD
1 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
7 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 15 m
€58-78
BIO · 5 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€62-91
BIO · 5 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
8 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 5 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 35 m
€102
BIO · 5 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BrusselsBRU, CRL
1 h 50 m
€157-160
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
LisbonLIS
1 h 30 m
€129-223
1 stop
BIO · 5 km
7 h 25 m
no fares
IAD · 37 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

MeasureBilbaoWashington DC
Official languageSpanish
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation19 m72 m
Main airportBilbao Airport (BIO)5 km from centre70 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBilbaoWashington DC
City population351,124689,545
People per km²8,4403,896
Museums within 10 km1799
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre5482
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bilbao or Washington DC 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.