VacationSelector

Bruges or Ottawa?

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, 1 point apart

Bruges
44
match

Wins on museums & heritage and good for families with your weighting.

Ottawa
43
match

Wins on nature & day trips and nightlife 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.

BrugesOttawa
Beaches & swimming. Bruges leads by 8 points.8
BrugesOttawa
Score80
Swim season months00
Beaches 10 km19
Coast distance14 km423 km
Water distance14 km
Places to eat. Ottawa leads by 7 points.7
BrugesOttawa
Score5764
Restaurants within 2 km of centre443684
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3234
Museums & heritage. Bruges leads by 25 points.25
BrugesOttawa
Score5732
Museums within 10 km3015
Museums within 2 km of centre248
Share of museums within 2 km %8053
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Ottawa leads by 10 points.10
BrugesOttawa
Score3444
Drinking venues within 4 km292432
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre233303
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8070
Nightclubs within 4 km835
Nature & day trips. Ottawa leads by 15 points.15
BrugesOttawa
Score2641
Protected land share 50 km %28
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %65100
Park area within 2 km59 hectares122 hectares
Good for families. Bruges leads by 14 points.14
BrugesOttawa
Score6046
Tourist attractions within 2 km5211
Park area within 2 km59 hectares122 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km11
Sights concentration. Ottawa leads by 10 points.10
BrugesOttawa
Score4050
Notable places within 2 km4071
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Bruges leads by 6 points.6
BrugesOttawa
Score6054
Price level global76.284
Daily budget€180
Year-round weather. Bruges leads by 3 points.3
BrugesOttawa
Score5653
Monthly daytime high6.4 °C to 22 °C-4.9 °C to 27 °C
Monthly rainfall35 mm to 79 mm53 mm to 94 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
Ottawa
-5
-3
3
11
19
24
27
26
22
14
6
-2
Sea temperature, °C
Bruges
7
6
7
9
12
15
18
19
18
15
11
8
Ottawa
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Bruges
59
52
44
35
51
64
74
79
72
76
78
74
Ottawa
60
53
56
74
66
87
82
89
78
94
59
80
Daylight, hours per day
Bruges
8
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Ottawa
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
Ottawa
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). Ottawa: 1991-2020 normals, Ottawa CDA RCS (5.3 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromBrugesOttawa
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 5 m
€98-165
1 stop
BRU · 94 km
6 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 35 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
1 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
TorontoYYZ, YHM, YTZ
7 h 45 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
1 h 5 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 10 m
€421
BRU · 94 km
50 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
8 h 30 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
1 h 55 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
7 h 20 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
WashingtonIAD, DCA
8 h 0 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
1 h 30 m
no fares
YOW · 12 km
HalifaxYHZ
6 h 30 m
no fares
BRU · 94 km
1 h 45 m
€260-457
1 stop
YOW · 12 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

MeasureBrugesOttawa
Official languageFrench, German, DutchFrench, English
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Canadian Dollar (CAD)
SocketsCE230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency number112911
Elevation2 m70 m
Main airportBrussels Airport (BRU)94 km from centre191 non-stop destinationsOttawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport (YOW)12 km from centre46 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year14 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureBrugesOttawa
City population118,5091,017,449
People per km²840366
Museums within 10 km3820
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre5162
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 Ottawa 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.