VacationSelector

Bruges or Lyon?

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 beaches & swimming and museums & heritage with your weighting.

Lyon
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on nightlife 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.

BrugesLyon
Beaches & swimming. Bruges leads by 8 points.8
BrugesLyon
Score80
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km126
Coast distance14 km253 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. Lyon leads by 22 points.22
BrugesLyon
Score5779
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4431,691
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3240
Museums & heritage. Bruges leads by 2 points.2
BrugesLyon
Score5755
Museums within 10 km3053
Museums within 2 km of centre2425
Share of museums within 2 km %8047
Unesco sites within 50 km32
Nightlife. Lyon leads by 24 points.24
BrugesLyon
Score3458
Drinking venues within 4 km292866
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre233611
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8071
Nightclubs within 4 km847
Nature & day trips. Lyon leads by 7 points.7
BrugesLyon
Score2633
Protected land share 50 km %26
Landscape blanket share 50 km %06
Land share of disc %65100
Park area within 2 km59 hectares120 hectares
Good for families. Bruges leads by 1 points.1
BrugesLyon
Score6059
Tourist attractions within 2 km5225
Park area within 2 km59 hectares120 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km12
Sights concentration. Lyon leads by 14 points.14
BrugesLyon
Score4054
Notable places within 2 km4086
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Lyon leads by 2 points.2
BrugesLyon
Score6062
Price level global76.273.7
Daily budget€180€160
Year-round weather. Lyon leads by 8 points.8
BrugesLyon
Score5664
Monthly daytime high6.4 °C to 22 °C7 °C to 28 °C
Monthly rainfall35 mm to 79 mm43 mm to 101 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
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Sea temperature, °C
Bruges
7
6
7
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Lyon
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bruges
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Daylight, hours per day
Bruges
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Bruges
3
3
5
7
8
8
8
7
6
4
3
2
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
3
2

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Bruges: 1991-2020 normals, Vlissingen (37.4 km from centre). Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrugesLyon
MadridMAD
2 h 15 m
€98-170
BRU · 94 km
1 h 45 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 10 m
€161-193
BRU · 94 km
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
RomeFCO, CIA
2 h 5 m
€87-136
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
1 h 30 m
€79-99
LYS · 20 km
LisbonLIS
2 h 40 m
€120-263
BRU · 94 km
2 h 20 m
€109-165
LYS · 20 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
€138-162
2 stops
BRU · 94 km
1 h 20 m
€195-211
2 stops
LYS · 20 km
DublinDUB
1 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
2 h 5 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
AlgiersALG
2 h 30 m
no fares
LIL · 72 km
1 h 50 m
€110-175
LYS · 20 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 111 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

MeasureBrugesLyon
Official languageFrench, German, DutchFrench
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Euro (EUR)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzCE230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number112112
Elevation2 m160 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)94 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrugesLyon
City population118,509519,127
People per km²84010,838
Museums within 10 km3842
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km32
Distinct cuisines in the centre51148
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone

Where else could you go?

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