VacationSelector

Bordeaux or Cologne?

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

Your match

Bordeaux
49
match

Wins on year-round weather and value for money with your weighting.

Cologne
✓ Best match
57
match

Wins on good for families and nature & day trips 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.

BordeauxCologne
Beaches & swimming. Bordeaux and Cologne are level on 0.
BordeauxCologne
Score00
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km440
Coast distance18 km256 km
Water distance
Places to eat. Cologne leads by 4 points.4
BordeauxCologne
Score6872
Restaurants within 2 km of centre9751,142
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3235
Museums & heritage. Cologne leads by 5 points.5
BordeauxCologne
Score5560
Museums within 10 km3547
Museums within 2 km of centre1727
Share of museums within 2 km %4957
Unesco sites within 50 km43
Nightlife. Cologne leads by 16 points.16
BordeauxCologne
Score4864
Drinking venues within 4 km5461,107
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre427727
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7866
Nightclubs within 4 km3290
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 20 points.20
BordeauxCologne
Score5171
Protected land share 50 km %3553
Landscape blanket share 50 km %3552
Land share of disc %85100
Park area within 2 km43 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 27 points.27
BordeauxCologne
Score4572
Tourist attractions within 2 km2143
Park area within 2 km43 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km16
Sights concentration. Cologne leads by 8 points.8
BordeauxCologne
Score4553
Notable places within 2 km5181
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bordeaux leads by 2 points.2
BordeauxCologne
Score6260
Price level global73.775.9
Daily budget€160€163
Year-round weather. Bordeaux leads by 8 points.8
BordeauxCologne
Score6860
Monthly daytime high10.5 °C to 27.6 °C6.3 °C to 25 °C
Monthly rainfall47 mm to 114 mm48 mm to 81 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
Bordeaux
11
12
16
18
22
25
27
28
24
20
14
11
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Rainfall, mm
Bordeaux
87
67
63
76
71
71
47
57
81
83
114
107
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Daylight, hours per day
Bordeaux
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Sunshine, hours per day
Bordeaux
3
4
6
6
7
8
8
8
7
5
3
3
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bordeaux: 1991-2020 normals, Bordeaux / Merignac (9.5 km from centre). Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBordeauxCologne
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 30 m
€46-73
BOD · 11 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
PalmaPMI
1 h 25 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
2 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 30 m
€237-323
BOD · 11 km
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 15 m
€114-148
BOD · 11 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
LyonLYS
1 h 15 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
1 h 25 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
MarseilleMRS
1 h 15 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
1 h 40 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
BarcelonaBCN
1 h 10 m
€77-107
BOD · 11 km
2 h 0 m
€77-159
CGN · 15 km
MunichMUC
1 h 55 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
HurghadaHRG
4 h 55 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
4 h 45 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
Fort-de-FranceFDF
8 h 20 m
no fares
BOD · 11 km
9 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 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

MeasureBordeauxCologne
Official languageFrenchGerman
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCF230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation1 m59 m
Main airportBordeaux–Mérignac Airport (BOD)11 km from centre94 non-stop destinationsCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBordeauxCologne
City population267,9911,024,621
People per km²5,4252,530
Museums within 10 km1840
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km43
Distinct cuisines in the centre8184

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Bordeaux or Cologne 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. 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. 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. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates.

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.