VacationSelector

Chicago or Lucerne?

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

Your match

Chicago
✓ Best match
56
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

Lucerne
33
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

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.

ChicagoLucerne
Beaches & swimming. Chicago leads by 53 points.53
ChicagoLucerne
Score530
Swim season months10
Beaches 10 km1216
Coast distance10,000 km669 km
Water distance1 km
Places to eat. Chicago leads by 34 points.34
ChicagoLucerne
Score8147
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2,147269
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3725
Museums & heritage. Chicago leads by 6 points.6
ChicagoLucerne
Score4640
Museums within 10 km4523
Museums within 2 km of centre2013
Share of museums within 2 km %4457
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Chicago leads by 34 points.34
ChicagoLucerne
Score6228
Drinking venues within 4 km1,123202
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre728151
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6575
Nightclubs within 4 km5111
Nature & day trips. Chicago leads by 13 points.13
ChicagoLucerne
Score3825
Protected land share 50 km %67
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %100100
Park area within 2 km118 hectares29 hectares
Good for families. Chicago leads by 17 points.17
ChicagoLucerne
Score5538
Tourist attractions within 2 km1815
Park area within 2 km118 hectares29 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km21
Sights concentration. Chicago leads by 35 points.35
ChicagoLucerne
Score7035
Notable places within 2 km21729
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Chicago leads by 8 points.8
ChicagoLucerne
Score4335
Price level global100110.5
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. Chicago leads by 4 points.4
ChicagoLucerne
Score5753
Monthly daytime high0.2 °C to 29.4 °C3.6 °C to 24.3 °C
Monthly rainfall54 mm to 121 mm60 mm to 128 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
Chicago
0
3
9
15
22
27
29
28
25
17
10
3
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Sea temperature, °C
Chicago
3
2
2
4
7
14
21
23
20
15
9
6
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Rainfall, mm
Chicago
58
54
68
105
121
115
102
104
85
98
69
59
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Daylight, hours per day
Chicago
10
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Sunshine, hours per day
Chicago
No sunshine record
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Chicago: 1991-2020 normals, Chicago Midway Airport (14.5 km from centre). Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromChicagoLucerne
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
2 h 5 m
€201-231
ORD · 25 km
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
8 h 10 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
8 h 30 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
11 h 0 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
AmsterdamAMS
8 h 25 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
1 h 25 m
€234-276
ZRH · 49 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
1 h 50 m
€141-200
ORD · 25 km
9 h 30 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
MadridMAD
8 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
2 h 5 m
€158-220
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
14 h 20 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
TokyoHND, NRT
12 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
11 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
Sao PauloGRU, VCP, CGH, RTE
10 h 35 m
no fares
ORD · 25 km
12 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 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

MeasureChicagoLucerne
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, Romansh
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Swiss Franc (CHF)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzCJ230 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC-6, UTC-5 in summerUTC+1, UTC+2 in summer
Emergency number911112
Elevation179 m436 m
Main airportChicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)25 km from centre272 non-stop destinationsZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days12 days

By the numbers

MeasureChicagoLucerne
City population2,746,38886,234
People per km²4,5292,963
Museums within 10 km4314
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre8746
Swim season, months above 21 °C1 month

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Chicago or Lucerne 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). Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. 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.