VacationSelector

Bruges or Chicago?

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

Your match

Bruges
44
match

Wins on value for money and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Chicago
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration 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.

BrugesChicago
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 45 points.45
BrugesChicago
Score853
Swim season months01
Beaches 10 km112
Coast distance14 km10,000 km
Water distance14 km1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 24 points.24
BrugesChicago
Score5781
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4432,147
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3237
Museums & heritage. Bruges leads by 11 points.11
BrugesChicago
Score5746
Museums within 10 km3045
Museums within 2 km of centre2420
Share of museums within 2 km %8044
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 28 points.28
BrugesChicago
Score3462
Drinking venues within 4 km2921,123
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre233728
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8065
Nightclubs within 4 km851
Nature & day trips. Chicago leads by 12 points.12
BrugesChicago
Score2638
Protected land share 50 km %26
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %65100
Park area within 2 km59 hectares118 hectares
Good for families. Bruges leads by 5 points.5
BrugesChicago
Score6055
Tourist attractions within 2 km5218
Park area within 2 km59 hectares118 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 30 points.30
BrugesChicago
Score4070
Notable places within 2 km40217
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bruges leads by 17 points.17
BrugesChicago
Score6043
Price level global76.2100
Daily budget€180
Year-round weather. Chicago leads by 1 points.1
BrugesChicago
Score5657
Monthly daytime high6.4 °C to 22 °C0.2 °C to 29.4 °C
Monthly rainfall35 mm to 79 mm54 mm to 121 mm
Dry months10
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
Bruges
6
7
10
13
17
20
22
22
19
15
10
7
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Sea temperature, °C
Bruges
7
6
7
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Rainfall, mm
Bruges
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Daylight, hours per day
Bruges
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bruges
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2
Chicago
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bruges: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (37.4 km from centre). Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrugesChicago
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 94 km
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
9 h 45 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 94 km
11 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 45 m
€93-156
BRU · 94 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 94 km
8 h 15 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
12 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
Abu DhabiAUH
6 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
14 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
12 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
10 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 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

MeasureBrugesChicago
Official languageFrench, German, Dutch
CurrencyEuro (EUR)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-6, UTC-5 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation2 m179 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)94 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days13 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrugesChicago
City population118,5092,746,388
People per km²8404,529
Museums within 10 km3843
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre5187
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone1 month

Where else could you go?

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